New York City's cultural history includes a staggering array of musical talent, but only a handful of musicians get their names on street signs.

In its final meeting of the year, the New York City Council voted 48-0 to honor three music icons in their home boroughs: famed hip hop artists Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) and the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as folk singer Woody Guthrie. — Gothamist

One of ARO’s two concepts shows a huge white building emblazoned with the Amazon logo. [...] It’s a never-ending fulfillment center that the architects dub “Continuous Fulfillment.” According to ARO principals Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell, the idea is an homage to a 1969 concept from the Italian radical architecture firm Superstudio called “The Continuous Monument.” The idea posits that technology will render the built environment uniform, turning buildings into white monoliths. — Fast Company

The elevator-phobic people of New York City are almost our own subculture [...] I’ve fantasized at times about a kind of utopia: a gleaming glass city free of elevators. But for now I, just like Gabriella and Rachel and Kevin and Nakia, still live in New York, and still constantly have to force myself to enter slim or squat boxes of despair. Why haven’t we left? What strange fate have we dealt ourselves, to live in a place full of hellscapes. — Amos Barshad, Topic

Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled several new details about the upcoming transformation of [JFK Airport,] most notably the creation of two new terminals that will replace some of the existing terminals, and rise on the northern and southern end of the complex. The cost of this revamp has gone up from the $10 billion estimate that accompanied the first announcement about the redevelopment in early 2017 to the current estimate of $13 billion. — Curbed NY

Thankfully, workers will no longer have to wade through crowds of wayward tourists every day. A new entrance officially opened [Aug. 22] for the famous Midtown supertall, designed to accommodate the large number of visitors and create a more engaging experience. [...] The crown jewel for the new lobby is certainly the introduction of a two-story tall model of the Empire State Building in front of an illuminating blue seamless background. — New York Yimby

Row New York announced [...] that award-winning architecture firm Foster + Partners will design a new boathouse and flagship location for the nonprofit organization, which offers a competitive rowing and academic success program to students from underserved communities throughout New York City. The new 14,000-square- foot facility is being designed pro bono by Foster + Partners in association with Bade Stageberg Cox [...]. — Row New York

Whether these new apartment buildings can endure another major storm does not seem to be a concern for most residents, who are glad to have new options in inventory-starved markets. Critics, though, ask whether the neighborhoods can withstand the surge of new development and the stress it will add to an already strained infrastructure. These new buildings might remain unscathed in a flood, they say, but what about the damage caused by the torrent around them? — The New York Times

The architect behind 53 West 53rd wanted the tower to be synonymous with New York City, to be a building that couldn’t easily be slipped into another skyline.

“A worldwide catastrophe today is the number of buildings that are parachuted because they were preconceived. Offices, housing, shopping malls all look the same,” Jean Nouvel told The Real Deal, translated from French. — The Real Deal

Back in January, the Jean Nouvel-designed MoMA tower was on the heels of reaching its full 82-story height and now, that milestone has been accomplished. Last week, the long-awaited supertall, named 53W53, topped out and it now stands at 1,050 feet tall, tying with the New York Times building and the Chrysler Building as the city’s sixth tallest building. — Curbed

New York’s nightscape is as iconic [...] as it is taken for granted. A city without streetlights is impossible to imagine, but New York’s 396,572 street-side luminaires are as unremarkable as the streets’ paving — invisible until something changes. An initiative to replace sodium and halogen bulbs with energy- and cost-efficient LEDs has thrown the nightscape suddenly into question, as some city residents bemoan the loss of romance (and sleep). — Urban Omnibus

WSJ reports that “a person familiar with the matter” claims that Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry have been tapped to design buildings for the megaproject’s second phase, due to rise over the west side rail yards [...] There’s little information beyond that, but 2018 is the year that co-developers Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group are due to start work on the platform that will cover the west side yards — Curbed

Mayor de Blasio’s recent pledge to close the Rikers Island jail complex within ten years was met with celebration by many — and skepticism by others. After 85 years in the public imagination, it has become hard to believe that the East River behemoth could ever really be slain. But the reality of a post-Rikers future is coming into focus [...]. Rikers is toxic, and its era is done. A change is on the wind, it seems, and the island’s aura of inevitability is finally dispersing. — Urban Omnibus