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

Alexandre Gady, conservationist, historian of French architecture and professor of modern architecture at the Sorbonne, argues that changing or “renewing” Paris diverts from its real need to look outwards. Paris, he says, is a “finished” city that does not need improving or anything more doing to it. “It’s not that we should be doing this or that – we should not be doing anything in central Paris ... any plan is a diversion from the need of the city to grow outwards,” [...] — theguardian.com

Amid politically charged scenes, Paris city council has narrowly rejected a plan to build the historic city's first skyscraper since a height restriction was imposed in the 1970s.

But Mayor Anne Hidalgo said [...] she would fight the Triangle tower vote. [...]

The architects, Herzog and de Meuron, proposed to build the 180m (590ft) tower in the south-west Porte de Versailles area of the city, after then-Mayor Bertrand Delanoe proposed an end to the 37m limit in parts of the capital. — bbc.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

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

London's Gherkin skyscraper has been put up for sale, with interest expected from Chinese, other Asian, and US buyers, estate agency Savills has said.

The City of London tower is expected to fetch offers in the region of £650m, the firm said. — bbc.com

Here is another reason to buy a mega-million-dollar apartment in a Manhattan high-rise: Earthquake forecast maps for New York City that a federal agency issued on Thursday indicate “a slightly lower hazard for tall buildings than previously thought.”

The agency, the United States Geological Survey, tempered its latest quake prediction with a big caveat.

“The tall buildings in Manhattan are not where you should be focusing [...]" — nytimes.com

225 West 57th Street‘s facade will top-out 1,479′ above street level, while a surprise spire on top will cap the tower at 1,775 feet. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill are designing the building.

The new height details will result in several superlatives: Manhattan will finally retake the ‘tallest roof’ in the United States from Chicago’s Willis Tower, which stands 1,451′, and 225 West 57th Street will become the tallest residential building in the entire world [...]. — newyorkyimby.com

Imagined with bright pink and green lights, standing more than 150m taller than the Burj Khalifa and emerging from an island in a lake in central China, these plans for Wuhan’s Phoenix Towers seem a world away from grey old London.

Yet the ambitious design revealed this week has been put forward by the British architectural firm Chetwoods, and owes much of its inspiration to an award-winning project for a new, greener London Bridge. — independent.co.uk

Skyscrapers designed by some of the world's biggest firms go head to head to get to the top in the yearly Emporis Skyscraper Award, the international prestigious prize for skyscrapers.

Winning the top prize this year is Renzo Piano and Adamson Associates' "The Shard", which is also currently Western Europe's tallest building at 306 meters tall. The London-based tower was chosen out of 300 skyscrapers at least 100 m. in height and that were completed in the previous calendar year. — bustler.net

These days, it is not just a woman who can never be too rich or too thin. You can say almost exactly the same thing about skyscrapers, or at least about the latest residential ones now going up in New York City, which are much taller, much thinner, and much, much more expensive than their predecessors. And almost every one of them seems built to be taller, thinner, and pricier than the one that came before. — vanityfair.com