Just in time for the Independence Day weekend, Legoland is showing off an extensive remodel of its New York miniland, dominated by a towering replica of Manhattan’s One World Trade Center. [...]

Nearly a year in the making, the redesigned New York area includes a number of new buildings, a dozen more moving automobiles and a subway system with new cars and tracks that are illuminated and feature sound effects that mimic the real thing. — San Diego Union-Tribune

In a ceremony packed with construction workers, news crews, and real estate folk, the final bucket of concrete made its way to the top of 3 World Trade Center, marking the topping out of this 1,079-foot supertall tower. The 80-story building was designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and spans 2.5 million square feet. Once complete in 2018, it will be the fifth tallest tower in New York City. — Curbed NY

Almost two-thirds of homes in the Tower, a 50-storey apartment complex in London, are in foreign ownership, with a quarter held through secretive offshore companies based in tax havens, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

The first residents of the landmark development arrived in October 2013, but many of the homes are barely occupied, with some residents saying they only use them for a fraction of the year. — The Guardian

A group of developers on the short list to buy Tribune Tower want to convert the Gothic Michigan Avenue landmark into condominiums, apartments and even a hotel [...]

The property also comes with something all developers love: land for new buildings. A buyer could build one or two more towers on the parking lot next door and on space created by demolishing some of the existing Tribune building that is not landmarked. [...] — Crain's Chicago Business

But an old friend, and a special commission, have gotten the architect to change his stripes. Mr. Meier has designed a black building.

At East 39th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, developer Sheldon Solow will be unveiling a 42-story, 556-unit residential building. It will be Mr. Meier’s tallest in the city and his first since his trio of apartment towers on West Street were completed in 2004. — The Wall Street Journal

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) joined officials of Shanghai Tower in unveiling the commemorative signboard designating Shanghai Tower the tallest building in China and the second-tallest building in the world. With a height of 632 meters, Shanghai Tower is only the third “megatall” building of 600 meters or higher in the world. — ctbuh.org

Elevator manufacturer Otis will build the world’s tallest elevator test tower in Shanghai, as part of the company’s bid to develop lifts for skyscrapers in China and around the world.

The elevator test tower will be 270 metres high and it is an anticipated to be the tallest above-ground test tower in the world upon completion, Otis said on Tuesday. — GB Times

In an order that sends a strong message against corruption, the Bombay High Court on Friday ordered the Union Environment Ministry to demolish 31-storey Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society. [...]

The society, originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and war widows, was converted into a 100-metre-tall building with politicians, bureaucrats and army officers allegedly conspiring to get flats allotted to them in the cooperative society at below-market rates. — The Times of India

That is the question that plagues all these green towers. Will they really ever look like they do on the billboards? The question is important because what this outbreak of green means is that architects and developers are hiding ugly, ill-considered buildings behind curtains of foliage and if the green doesn’t grow, all we’re left with is the dumb, naked towers, blank and expressionless with the fig leaf of a few, well, fig leaves for cover. — ft.com

As the story goes, the original owner of this unwieldy building located in Willow, Alaska built his house shortly after a forest fire with a clear view of Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. As the surrounding trees recovered, the pristine view was obscured and the owner decided to add few more stories, eventually spending a decade adding floors until it reached the 12-ish story tower you see today. Not surprisingly, locals refer to the building as the “Dr. Seuss House” [...]. — thisiscolossal.com

The Shukhov Tower, a 1920s broadcast transmission tower in Moscow that is a landmark of modernist structural engineering, has been placed on the 2016 World Monuments Fund Watch list of endangered global cultural heritage sites.

Activists in Moscow organized two days of events over the weekend to observe the tower’s 94th birthday [...]

At a Kremlin meeting last December, Mr. Putin praised activists for rallying to save cultural heritage sites and dressed down officials for not doing enough. — nytimes.com

France is to make its first attempt at timber tower construction with two tall wooden buildings in Bordeaux.

The towers, reaching 50m and 57m in height, will be developed in the centre of the city by Bordeaux Euratlantique, a public body involved in modernising Bordeaux.

The project team for “Hypérion”, the 18-storey (57m) residential tower, will include Eiffage, specialist wood contractor Woodeum, social landlord Clairsienne and architect Jean-Paul Viguier & Associés. — globalconstructionreview.com