The United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square, a Modernist concrete building in the heart of Mayfair, London’s most exclusive neighborhood, has been a potential terrorist target for years, creating anxiety for both employees and neighbors...So a new embassy [by KieranTimberlake] is under construction for a move by 2017, and the residents of Mayfair are relieved. But this being Britain, the new embassy has become the object of debate and, in some quarters, ridicule. — The New York Times

Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum for Contemporary Art is due to open the doors of its new $27m home in Gorky Park to invited guests on 10 June and the public two days later. The museum is housed in a Soviet-era pavilion that has been converted by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas [...].

In another riff on the building’s architecture, Garage will be hosting a conference in October on Soviet Modernism, a project of the Austrian curator Georg Schöllhammer [...]. — The Art Newspaper

“The architecture becomes a solution to an almost unsolvable puzzle,” Ingels told me one recent morning. — WIRED Magazine

The Hotel Okura, built in 1962 in time for the 1964 Olympics, is slated to be torn down in September to make way for a bigger, fancier Okura, in time for the 2020 Olympics. (The less-good, less-famous southern wing of the old Okura, added in 1973, will be allowed to stay.) [...]

There will never be this particular hush again in the middle of Tokyo. You will have to have been there to know what you will soon miss. — nytimes.com

Can the field’s top minds change the way we think about a doomed housing project in Naples or the most abhorred skyscraper in Paris? Allow them to try. — The New York Times

Vancouver architect Michael Green is proposing to alter the iconic Parisian skyline — by building the world's tallest wooden building...'Just as Gustave Eiffel shattered our conception of what was possible a century and a half ago, this project can push the envelope of wood innovation with France in the forefront,' said Green in a press release. — cbc.ca

Tokyo is known for its mix of modern and traditional architecture, but for long-term residents it is easy to feel like the concrete is winning out. [...]

The buildings done by acclaimed Tokyo-based architect Kengo Kuma are different. [...]

Kuma’s campaign to bring Japanese-ness back to architecture has had fascinating results. — qz.com

The Frick Collection has yielded.

Facing a groundswell of opposition to a proposed renovation that would have eliminated a gated garden to make way for a six-story addition, the museum — long admired for its intimate scale — has decided to abandon those plans and start over from scratch. [...]

With the proposed renovation, designed by Davis Brody Bond, the Frick, on East 70th Street in Manhattan, had sought to increase its exhibition space [...]. — nytimes.com

Despite seeing completion last October, following orders from leader Kim Jong Un, only half of the units of a major apartment complex built near Pyongyang’s Taedong River are currently occupied. [...]

“The elevator runs only during breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours, so for long spans of time it will be impossible to get to the 40th floor,” the source said. “There isn’t even a place for people to put their bicycles, which are the most fundamental tools for people’s livelihoods.” — dailynk.com

“This isn’t your grandfather’s Wall Street.” — Bloomberg Business

Google already had building rights for a fifth site overlooking Charleston Park, just east of the current Googleplex [...]

A 2007 lease agreement allows Google to build up to 595,000 square feet of office and commercial space there. [...]

The new plans feature the same futuristic designs by European architects Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick that were part of the larger plan debated by the city this year. — mercurynews.com

Legends, a company that manages skyboxes and stadiums and now runs the World Trade Center observation deck, has turned the view into a high-tech spectacular. Before you get a glimpse of an actual place, you follow a winding path through cheesy synthetic bedrock; ride an elevator where 500 years of an ever-changing New York unfold as if seen from a rising balloon [...]

A view gives the illusion of omniscience. — nymag.com

It’s where the Girl Scouts set up their cookie-selling tables, and community groups host bake sales in the parking lot. In the store, Barragan inevitably runs into students, former students, parents of students, and fellow teachers; sometimes it takes forever to get a simple errand done because of all the neighborly small talk. — Talking Points Memo