A delegation from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, which inspected the building almost 15 years ago, concluded it was beyond repair and its lift shafts crooked.

But in 2008 an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, which operates a mobile network in North Korea, began equipping the building.

Mr Wittwer said the hotel will "partially, probably" open for business next year.

But original plans for 3,000 hotel rooms and three revolving restaurants have been greatly scaled back. — bbc.co.uk

Richard Meier is managing partner of New York's Richard Meier & Partners Architects. His residential designs, starting with the Smith House in Darien Conn., in 1967, are known for their white surfaces, floor-to-ceiling windows and views of the landscape. He recently spoke to Marc Myers about his East Hampton farmhouse. — The Wall Street Journal

The easiest part of a harried three days came Friday around noon, when we met to settle on the cover. A photograph taken by Iwan Baan on Wednesday night, showing the Island of Manhattan, half aglow and half in dark, was the clear choice, for the way it fit with the bigger story we have tried to tell here about a powerful city rendered powerless. — nymag.com

Carlos Acosta's plan to inject life into the island's hidebound ballet scene by refurbishing Havana's crumbling dance school and turning it into an international center for culture and dance has ignited controversy for daring to reimagine the original architect's vision.

Acosta was visibly frustrated by the flap over what he views as a way to give something back as he prepares to retire from London's Royal Ballet after a celebrated career. — npr.org

In the terms of the story, we wanted to distill experience to a shape, a volume, instead of a literal space-type (“castle” or “gingerbread house,” etc.) We chose this path in part because the structure of the story wasn’t accessible, the events were scattered, random and untethered to a place. So we had to find the rope, make the place, invent a story-space outside the tale itself. — Places Journal

Zaha Hadid is a Woman of the Year because… “She’s an extraordinary force of nature that came out of the blue and whacked us all on the back of the head and said, ‘Wake up, kids, there’s more stuff to do.’ ” —architect Frank Gehry — glamour.com

"If exercise and everyday activity is the mantra, how do you, through design, get people to exercise? ... There is a direct relation between the built environment and people's lifestyles."

History has proved it. Architecture played a major role in defeating infectious diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis in the 19th and 20th centuries by designing better buildings, streets, clean-water systems and parks. — usatoday.com

As it turns out, infrastructure really matters. Your chance of injury drops by about 50 percent, relative to that major city street, when riding on a similar road with a bike lane and no parked cars. The same improvement occurs on bike paths and local streets with designated bike routes. And protected bike lanes – with actual barriers separating cyclists from traffic – really make a difference. The risk of injury drops for riders there by 90 percent. — m.theatlanticcities.com

I realize that Sandy will prob cause billions in damage to the eastern seaboard, and the lost work will not be great for the GDP, but perhaps the resulting building boom will provide the boost the economy needs? — archinect.com

One of the most fascinating things we at MONU recently experienced during a trip to Brasilia had nothing to do with its famous Oscar Niemeyer monuments or the city itself, but with the context surrounding the city.

(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, November 2012) — http://www.monu-magazine.com/submit.htm

Mr. Urbach, 49, until recently the curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and his spouse, Dr. Hartman, 52, a psychoanalyst, have approached the design of their home as if it were a conceptual art exhibit for two.

The apartment’s many mirrors aren’t for checking for stray nose hairs. They “complicate spatial relationships,” Mr. Urbach says. — nytimes.com

Deep in Hong Kong’s core, 17 floors of a run-down building full of transients provide a key to understanding globalization from the bottom up. Gordon Mathews’s Ghetto at the Center of the World (Univer­sity of Chicago Press, 2011) paints a detailed portrait of life in and around Chungking Mansions, a single property with two common retail/galleria floors with a basement, and three independent towers that rise above them. — urbanland.uli.org

Problems...will continue to plague Mumbai as long as the government continues to pretend to put all its faith into a thoroughly planned city-wide manifesto that is ultimately tossed aside... In rethinking the grandiose nature of the Development Plan, perhaps the government can engage in smaller scale implementations and allow new regulations and ideas to...move beyond its paper urbanity. — The Global Urbanist