With flawless blue skies and the latest landmarks of cutting edge design, postcards from across the Soviet Union were miniature propaganda posters for the success of the communist system.  

Showcasing brutalist hotels, futurist TV towers, and bold concrete tower blocks, each image is a snapshot of the transformative decades between 1960 and 1990: from the endless optimism of Khrushchev's Thaw, to the closing years of the Cold War. — calvertjournal.com

The buildings aren’t the work of celebrated modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They bear no resemblance to the towering glass and steel monuments to postwar rationalism that you see downtown. They house doctors’ offices and dry cleaners, furniture stores and accounting firms. Some are vacant, their prim hedges and topiary gone to seed. — chicagomag.com

Skyscraper owner Blackstone hopes Catalog, the centerpiece of the building's ongoing $668 million renovation, will set off a rush of foot traffic in the southwest corner of the Loop. [...]

Anchoring Catalog will be Willis Tower's first food hall, a 14,000-square-foot location run by London-based food hall operator Urbanspace, as well as dining options Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Luke's Lobster and Taylor Gourmet. — Crain's Chicago Business

Earlier this month, The Real Deal put out a monster analysis looking at the biggest property owners across the city based on square footage, along with their annual net operating income.

Their thorough analysis is definitely worth a read, but right here we’re going to give you a breakdown of the top 10 biggest property owners in the city, and some of the projects you might recognize them for. — ny.curbed.com

On August 13, a brand-new town in Southern California welcomed its first residents [...] on a light-industrial stretch of Main Street in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb. Then they emerged in Town Square®—a 9,000-square-foot working replica of a 1950s downtown, built and operated by the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers. Unlike the businesses around it hawking restaurant supplies and tires, Town Square trades in an intangible good: memories. — citylab.com

The city will eventually demolish the building to put a 27-story office tower on the site, [costing over] $700 million. Last month, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Coalition to Preserve LA teamed up to file a petition...that could have forced the city to halt demolition while the case was being decided...But Garcetti has said the building is contaminated with asbestos and unsound seismically. It is also tarnished by its association with dark LAPD history. — Curbed LA

Glasgow's Mackintosh building will definitely be rebuilt, according to Muriel Gray, chairwoman of the Glasgow School of Art's board.

The building was gutted by fire in June, following another blaze in 2014.

The future of the GSA has faced speculation that it could be demolished or turned into a museum.

But Ms Gray, a former student at the school, told BBC Scotland it would be rebuilt as a working art school, saying that was "non-negotiable". — BBC

The department also took Millennium’s managers to task for not being more communicative about the crack and their efforts to find the cause. The department said it “continues to be frustrated with the communication” with the tower’s managers over a variety of issues.

“We often do not find out information about the building until we first receive calls about an issue from the media or read them in a news report,” the department said in its letter Wednesday. — San Francisco Chronicle

After 2½ years of negotiations, the condo project Westbank King Street has been approved and is about to start sales. [...] The new condo will be hard to miss. It could be the strangest residential building ever constructed in Canada. Certainly, it will set an interesting example for new housing. While new condos and apartments are often faulted for being soulless, this promises to be a carefully detailed building, a distinctive place, and a village that contributes to the larger city. — The Globe and Mail

One of the most recognizable buildings in Downtown Los Angeles—the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall—will be used as a canvas later this month.

To celebrate the start of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new season, colorful patterns will be projected onto the metallic surface of the wavy concert hall for a little more than a week, courtesy of artist Refik Anadol. — Curbed LA

As with every single other thing about Seattle, there’ve been some developments in residential design since 2008 [...] Here are five opportunities, in the form of developments in residential architecture over the past 10 years as identified — and expressed — by some plugged-in visionaries. — The Seattle Times