An abandoned skyscraper still stands incomplete in the bustling capital of Guangdong Province after 16 years because no one is brave enough to ask for it to be torn down.

The 46-story building looks strange as it towers over Guangzhou, a commercial hub in southern China with a population of more than 12 million. Its location just behind a golden high-rise building -- popular in China -- and luxury hotels makes the concrete shell look especially creepy and eerie. — Nikkei Asian Review

Plans for a 381m high luxury hotel tower in a sleepy Alpine village have just been unveiled – and the designer is convinced it will fit right in. But is it any more than a castle in the air? [...]

The new hotel tower, designed by Pritzker prizewinner Thom Mayne’s practice, Morphosis, will shoot up 381m into the clouds (almost a third taller than the Shard), a looming spectre visible for miles around the tiny alpine village. It is a gigantic mirror-clad middle finger aimed at the region [...]. — theguardian.com

The technology of supertall buildings is a bit like genetic testing or nuclear energy: a volatile form of power. Technological capacities have outpaced our judgment. We know we can do it, but we don’t know when not to do it. And so some endlessly wealthy mogul [...] will eventually move into a preposterously expensive penthouse so far above the Earth’s crust that the air is thin and gales hammer at the glass. A mile’s not science fiction. It’s not even an outer limit.  — nymag.com

Blackstone Group LP agreed to buy Chicago’s Willis Tower, the second-tallest building in the U.S., and plans to upgrade the retail and observatory space in a bet on growth in the city. [...]

On a per-square-foot basis, the valuation for the more than 40-year-old Willis Tower is lower than deals for newer buildings. The Blackstone price is about $342 a square foot, based on about 3.8 million square feet (353,000 square meters) of rentable space. — bloomberg.com

Among this new breed of towers, design elements not directly tied to profit are often downgraded or eliminated as overall costs climb. [...] With today’s mathematically generated super-spires, it’s best to paraphrase Mae West: “Architecture has nothing to do with it.”

[...] much as the new super-tall New York condos may serve that same general purpose, these are no works of art. If, as Goethe posited, architecture is frozen music, then these buildings are vertical money. — The New York Review of Books

Chicago’s Willis Tower, once the world’s tallest building and one of the city’s top tourist attractions, is up for sale. [...]

The 1,450-foot (442-meter) building, formerly known as the Sears Tower, is the second-tallest in the U.S., and was the world’s highest from its completion in the early 1970s until 1998 [...]

“It’s iconic in the size and how it dominates the skyline, [...] As an office building, however, it’s 1970s construction.” — bloomberg.com

Many of the tallest structures in the world are not designed by starchitects, and you’ve likely never seen them [...] dozens of nearly anonymous towers around the United States, most in small rural communities, dwarf all but the tallest man-made structures in the world.

Take the KVLY-TV Tower in Blanchard, North Dakota, a township of 26 people north of Fargo. At 2,063 feet (628.8 meters), it’s the tallest structure in the western hemisphere and the fourth-tallest structure in the world. — Re:form

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

“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

Mace has been appointed to a pre-construction deal to build the much delayed ‘Can of Ham’ project at 60-70 St Mary Axe, Construction News can reveal. [...]

The project was granted planning approval by the City of London in the summer of 2008 but immediately hit delays as the global financial crisis took hold [...].

The Foggo Associates-designed project will join a cluster of iconic towers in the centre of the City, including neighbouring 30 St Mary Axe, commonly known as the Gherkin. — Construction News

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