225 West 57th Street‘s facade will top-out 1,479′ above street level, while a surprise spire on top will cap the tower at 1,775 feet. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill are designing the building.

The new height details will result in several superlatives: Manhattan will finally retake the ‘tallest roof’ in the United States from Chicago’s Willis Tower, which stands 1,451′, and 225 West 57th Street will become the tallest residential building in the entire world [...]. — newyorkyimby.com

This report explores the historical castles and fortresses in Saudi Arabia’s al-Medina Al-Munawwarah, the Islamic faith’s second holy city. Al-Medina holds Prophet Mohammad’s Mosque and is 450 kilometers north of Makkah. Al Arabiya’s correspondent Khamis Al-Zahrani went on a mission to explore the city and discussed how urban expansions are posing a threat to its unique architecture. — Al-Arabiya

One of Spain’s largest bullrings could soon start an unlikely new life as a mosque. That might sound like a strange metamorphosis, but the city of Barcelona is currently considering plans suggested last month by the Emir of Qatar to convert Barcelona’s Plaza Monumental into a place of prayer for up to 4,000 worshippers. [...] With a projected cost of €2.2 billion, the Qataris are presumably planning something rather lavish for this already grand shell. — citylab.com

Zaha Hadid Architects has admitted it has made changes to its design for the stadium that will be the centrepiece of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

The firm has faced hostility in Japan with critics complaining that the proposed 80,000-seat stadium is too big, too costly and clashes with Tokyo’s urban planning.

At the weekend, 500 protestors marched around the existing National Stadium to demonstrate over plans to replace it with Hadid’s proposal [...]. — bdonline.co.uk

When the American architect Louis Kahn collapsed from a heart attack in the toilets of New York's Penn Station in 1974, he left behind a lot of loose ends. There were three children, by three different women [...]. There was his dwindling practice, which he left $500,000 in debt. And, tucked away in his sketchbooks, was a complete set of drawings for an unrealised project – one that would lie dormant in his archive for almost 40 years. — theguardian.com

After 14 years of talking, of battles, and of construction, and in one of the more ambitious reimaginings of a regional museum ever, the art-rich Clark has opened a new building, plopped a lake behind it and expanded to a 140-acre campus.

It opens July 4, and it is magnificent—mostly—but we’ll get to that. — news.artnet.com

As an architect, Gene Kaufman doesn’t typically save buildings; he designs them.

But when he heard of plans to change Paul Rudolph’s celebrated but shuttered government building in Goshen, N.Y., as part of a renovation plan, he decided to step in.

“To lose a building like this would be a tragedy,” said Mr. Kaufman, a partner at Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman Architects in New York City. — nytimes.com

Zack Giffin is [...] a host of a new series, “Tiny House Nation,” beginning Wednesday on FYI, an A & E Networks channel that used to be known as Bio. When we caught up with him by phone last week, he was on the road for the show, which chronicles those who live the tiny-house life. The chalet, he said, was sitting on a trailer “in a lovely field in Lummi Island, Washington State, on my parents’ property, which is where it lives when we are not around.” — nytimes.com

The city of Jericho sits in the hot, flat Jordan Valley down the hill from Jerusalem. Jericho has bragging rights as one of the oldest towns on Earth. But one of its newest homes looks like it might have arrived from outer space.

Ahmad Daoud hired a firm of young Palestinian architects to build this house. Like Jericho's original homes, it is built of dirt. This one has a contemporary twist, though: It's constructed with earth compacted in bags that are then stacked and plastered over. — npr.org

The Russian architect Yuri Grigoryan, and his firm Project Meganom, have been chosen for the long-delayed 22bn ruble ($640m) expansion of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. The new design replaces a controversial proposal by the British architect Norman Foster that required the destruction of historic buildings, upsetting preservationists. Foster pulled out of the project last year. — theartnewspaper.com

According to data compiled by the firm PropertyShark, since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors [...] “The global elite,” says developer Michael Stern, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.” — New York Magazine