Residents affected by the fire that broke out in The Torch tower in Dubai Marina at the weekend have been moved to a nearby hotel while the extent of the damage is assessed. [...]

More than 1,000 people fled after a fire broke out at around 2am on Saturday in one of the tallest residential buildings in the world. [...]

The exact cause of the fire is yet to be determined. — thenational.ae

Construction work on 'Aladdin City', a project inspired by the tales of Aladdin and Sindbad, will start next year, Dubai Municipality chief told Emirates 24|7. [...]

The project, which was announced in April 2014, will have three towers, comprising commercial and hotel space, with the towers spread over a distance of 450 metres on Dubai Creek. The total cost has not been revealed. — emirates247.com

“San Francisco is really focused on getting things right on the ground, creating a rich fabric,” said Gang... “You have your own ecosystem.” [...]

She’s at work here on a 40-story tower proposed at Folsom and Spear streets, one block in from the Embarcadero. The form would be simple, a lean rectangle, but the silhouette would be a ripple of angled bay windows, jagged and subtle at once.

“Some designers focus on the profile. We’re looking more at the elements, starting from the inside out,” — sfchronicle.com

City of Minneapolis planners on Friday rejected a proposal for an 80-story tower downtown and revealed problems they saw in the efforts of its developer.

The move quashed the prospects for a building that would have surpassed the IDS Center to become the tallest in Minnesota and injected new drama into an unusual public contest the city created to redevelop a parking lot on Nicollet Mall. — startribune.com

Greater Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has temporarily pulled the plug on the ambitious Taiwan Tower project, citing concerns over safety and its costs, which have ballooned from NT$8 billion (US$253.5 million) to NT$15 billion. [...]

Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who won an international competition in 2011 to draw up plans for the building, Taiwan Tower’s ornate steel structure was inspired by the trunk of a banyan tree. — taipeitimes.com

But all New Yorkers are losing familiar vistas, and some are losing light and air, as supertall buildings sprout like beanstalks in midtown Manhattan. There are a dozen such “supertalls” – buildings of 1,000 feet or higher – in the construction or planning stages. And the buildings are not, as in Dubai or Shanghai’s Pudong district, being constructed where nothing else had stood. They are, instead, crowding into already dense neighbourhoods where light and air are at a premium [...]. — theguardian.com

Work was halted on a luxury-condominium tower in midtown Manhattan after an 8-foot piece of guardrail from a construction elevator fell from the 81st floor to the street below.

The New York City Department of Buildings ordered all work stopped at 432 Park Ave., the 1,397-foot tower being built by Harry Macklowe and CIM Group [...].

The building, slated for completion this year, is one of the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere, according to the property's website. — crainsnewyork.com

On Wednesday, developer Richard L. Friedman will formally kick off construction of the tallest skyscraper to be built in Boston in 40 years — a 700-foot tower at 1 Dalton St. that will include the city’s second Four Seasons Hotel and some of its most expensive condominiums. [...]

The skyscraper at One Dalton is being designed by Hancock Tower architect Harry N. Cobb, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in collaboration with Gary Johnson of Cambridge Seven Associates Inc. — bostonglobe.com

The elevator doors snap shut behind Otto Solis and his fellow ironworkers. With a quick shudder, gears kick in for a rattling 90-second ascent through the concrete structure rising at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles.

The men huddle in the confined space. Wearing hard hats, bandannas, kneepads and gloves, they look like gladiators ready to fight. — latimes.com

City Realty made the rendering above, which they say gives us an idea of what the city will look like in 2018 based on projections for buildings currently being planned or already in construction: "New York City skyline circa 2018 2,500 feet above Central Park. Image features upcoming supertall skyscrapers such as One Vanderbilt, 53W53, 432 Park Avenue, 225 West 57th, and 111 West 57th Street are completed." — gothamist.com

By the end of next year one-in-three of the world’s 100m+ skyscrapers will be in China, as its state-orchestrated urbanisation drive prompts a megacity building bonanza [...]

China now has over 140 cities of more than one million people; America has nine — theguardian.com

... the 92-year-old structure had fallen into disrepair since it stopped transmitting TV signals in 2002. Plans to dismantle and relocate the tower were announced earlier this year, prompting Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas and other architects to petition Vladimir Putin to save it. Moscow's city council has now announced that the tower will be preserved at its current site. — newscientist.com

Someone has told the bouncers to be nice. It is now standard for architectural anoraks like myself to find ourselves challenged by smile-less security as we go about our blameless business – no loitering, no photography, no looking, as if al-Qaida scouts would do their dastardly work in this way or as if, years after the invention of the camera phone, photography can be controlled as it could in the age of the tripod. But not at the base of the Cheesegrater. — theguardian.com

The Turkish Council of State has ordered three luxury apartment blocks to be bulldozed amid widespread outrage. But will it have any impact on the country’s unstoppable, and often unlawful, construction boom? — theguardian.com