In London, though the Tate is now finished, there is other work to be done...

"We can’t sneer at developers," says Herzog. "They are the ones who will increasingly dominate the shaping of our cities. But we should try to convince them to add accessibility for everyone. To ask, can we do it better?" — Telegraph UK

A City Council committee could take the first steps Tuesday toward mandating that developers include affordable units in new housing complexes to be built in several East Austin neighborhoods.

The proposal by Council Member Greg Casar, who chairs the council’s Planning and Neighborhoods Committee, comes as soaring rents have pushed poorer and minority residents out of the city. — My Statesman

bastardized visual language has become the de facto standard of Dallas residential architecture development. The explanation for its ever-increasing prevalence, however depressing, is fairly straightforward. Developers find something that’s profitable and want to reproduce it. Risk-averse banks are happy to lend them money given their track record, at least in the short term. Architects, stuck with low budgets, tight schedules, and conservative developers, serve to please and follow convention. — artsblog.dallasnews.com

Earlier this month, developer Townscape Partners and Gehry Partners presented an unsolicited plan to the Beverly Hills City Council to build a huge mixed-use campus that would include hip office space, a five-star hotel, retail, and a three-acre public park on about seven acres of land...the council is expected to approve an agreement at their meeting tonight that should help this unexpected and enormous project take a big step forward. — Curbed

3 Sutton Place, a planned 950-foot-tall, 68-story Manhattan condo tower, won’t be materializing along the East River. After defaulting on $128.8 million in loans from lender Gamma Real Estate, developer Bauhouse Group‘s site at 426-432 East 58th Street will face foreclosure sale February 29th.

The site currently houses three contiguous five-story apartment buildings, which Bauhouse purchased to make way for the massive Foster + Partners-designed midtown skyscraper project. — BuzzBuzzHome

Three Taiwanese construction company executives have been detained on charges of professional negligence resulting in death following the collapse of an apartment building that killed dozens.

The district prosecutor's office in the city of Tainan said [...] that Lin Ming-hui and architects Chang Kui-an and Cheng Chin-kui were suspected of having overseen shoddy construction of the 17-story Weiguan Golden Dragon building, which crashed onto its side following an earthquake Saturday. — america.aljazeera.com

The proposed Fourth and Columbia Tower...would be a mixed-use office and residential tower rising up 1,111 feet above the street. It would be 101 stories, with two levels of retail shopping, four levels of above-grade parking, and six levels of office space. It would also play home to 350 hotel rooms, and 1,200 residential units...But being the tallest could be something [developer] Crescent Heights may not want to give up. — KOMO News

“There are a lot of people working in architecture who are very frustrated with what’s happening, but feel like they don’t have a voice to speak out,” said Sarah, another of Concrete Action’s co-founders, who also wished to remain anonymous. “We’re hoping that this is going to give them an avenue to do that without worrying about losing their jobs or getting into trouble.” — Vice

Seen exclusively by the Guardian, the document sheds new light on why so little affordable housing is being built across England; why planning policy consistently fails to be enforced; and why property developers are now enjoying profits that exceed even those of the pre-crash housing bubble. — theguardian.com

Often, at least in America, we think of regular people as the agents of change—the artist, the boutique coffee shop owner, the tech startup. But as much as gentrification is an organic process, fueled by opportunity seekers and bargain hunters, it’s developers and financiers who have become the savvy midwives of change. Once they detect the early signs of gentrification, they bring on the serious money. — Quartz

the System-Built developer may indeed have constructed this home without Wright’s knowledge — Urban Milwaukee

"There's actually such a lack of transparency that it is difficult to understand what developers and property owners are actually planning ... There's no mechanism for us or the city for us to understand ahead of time what's in the planning" [...]

The board ultimately wants Mayor Bill de Blasio to take steps to create more comprehensive zoning laws that would assess the impact of large towers on open space and mitigate any potential impacts, like shadows on Central Park. — wnyc.org

There are ways to bring elegance to 5 over 1 structures, but it requires a high degree of skill and commitment. Only a very talented designer can take such a limited palette of materials and make the resulting building interesting, if not elegant. But developers must be willing to hire those skilled designers. Many are simply not interested. [...] Hence, the wildly uneven — and often uninspiring — architecture in Seattle today. — crosscut.com

This would be the first U.S. tower for Snøhetta, founded in Norway but on the rise in the United States since being selected in 2004 to design the pavilion for the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.

Snøhetta will replace an even better-known architect for the corner: Richard Meier, the Pritzker Prize-winning designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, whose firm has been working on a tower in the same location since 2008. —

RFR plans to spend $250 million on Manhattan land purchases, up to $500 million on office building deals and $100 million to $150 million more on retailing properties — all before the end of the year. [...]

Perhaps the most under-the-radar purchase was 190 Bowery... Developers have been trying for years to buy the six-story Renaissance Revival structure, which appears abandoned, with blocked-off doorways, boarded-up windows and graffiti covering nearly all of the lower facade. — nytimes.com