Soon after a major renovation and reopening for the Rose Reading Room at their flagship Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the NYPL is now moving forward with another mammoth revamp on its Mid-Manhattan Library. The NYPL offers a first look at the overhaul, a project they are calling a “state-of-the-art library that will serve as both a model and catalyst for a rejuvenated library system.” — 6sqft.com

“She’s somebody who has a clear vision of respect for historical buildings but at the same time has a clean, elegant, modernist aesthetic that is very much about welcoming visitors today,” said Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director.

In coming up with a new design, Ms. Selldorf has been charged with improving circulation in the Frick’s galleries, library and public spaces, while maintaining the museum’s existing footprint and preserving its jewel-box character. — nytimes.com

From the outside, not much has changed. After a three-year, $69m renovation, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, looks about the same as it did when it first opened in June 1978. [...]

Step inside and the differences become clear. The gallery, which reopens to the public on 30 September, has managed to carve out more than 12,250 sq. ft of additional exhibition space without expanding its physical footprint. — theartnewspaper.com

The $12 million project, managed by Tishman Construction Corporation, came about in May 2014 when an ornamental plaster rosette fell 52 feet from the Reading Room’s ceiling. In addition to recreating and replacing this piece, all 900 rosettes in both rooms were reinforced with steel cables. Other work included the recreation of a 27′ x 33′ James Wall Finn mural on the ceiling of the Catalog Room and the restoration of the chandeliers. — 6sqft

California may be a capital of cosmetic surgery, but it’s not just noses and eyelids falling under the knife. A hot housing market is driving buyers to pay exorbitant sums for old, frumpy houses, knowing they’ll pay plenty more to remake them to modern tastes. Others currently own dowdy houses and choose to renovate rather than relocate. — Wall Street Journal

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to consider a proposed $190 million renovation to the Ford Foundation...Although many aspects of the building have long been outdated...it is health and safety, not aesthetics or technology, that initially drove the foundation’s plans. The city has given Ford until 2019 to bring the building up to code for fire safety and handicapped accessibility... — Curbed

To those concerned about the renovation of the Hood Museum of Art, the situation is charged with paradox: The architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, who protested the Museum of Modern Art’s dismantling of the Folk Art Museum they designed in Manhattan, are now transforming the Hood, an award-winning museum designed by Charles Moore [...].

“It’s almost as if they were getting revenge for what MoMA did to their Folk Art Museum [...] It’s totally insensitive to the Moore building.” — nytimes.com

Two giant, translucent canopies spanning several lanes of roadway and sidewalks outside the domestic terminal will be among the most visible aspects of a $6 billion expansion and renovation project at the world’s busiest airport during the next 20 years, officials announced last week.

Among other goals for the coming year: improving wait times for passenger security screenings...'Americans will not tolerate a one-hour wait as normal.' — The Post and Courier

Deborah Berke’s appointment last year as the first female dean of the Yale School of Architecture might have brought her into the limelight, but the architect and interior designer had already been getting attention for her work on 21c Museum Hotels, a small chain of boutique properties doubling as art galleries. [...]

In old buildings, you’re taking what you find and complementing that with the architecture and design of today. — nytimes.com

The renovation has pared Kahn's spaces down to their essence, restoring a Zenlike calm, and revealing the muscular concrete structure that made the design such a revelation in the early 1960s, when International Style glass towers were all the rage. As Kahn, who was known for his mystical pronouncements, might say, Richards has become the building it always wanted to be. — philly.com

The Milwaukee Art Museum is due to reopen on 24 November after a 14-month, $34m renovation that brings the institution back from the brink. When the museum made the unorthodox decision to begin planning an expansion at the height of the recession in 2009, mould flourished, floors buckled and ceilings leaked in the two buildings that housed the permanent collection. [...]

Roberts says: “People who know our museum will not believe that this is the same museum.” — theartnewspaper.com

A New Zealand man has set out to document and photograph former Pizza Hut locations across the planet, specifically looking for the pizza chain’s dine-in locations with the familiar red roof. [...]

“The strangest thing may be the funeral homes or mortuaries. It's probably the last thing you'd expect to see a Pizza Hut become but there are several dotted around” — chron.com

When the 70th regular session of the General Assembly convenes on Sept. 15, it will do so in a complex of buildings that hasn’t looked so good or felt so secure in generations.

“We now have a very safe compound,” said Michael Adlerstein, [...] executive director of a seven-year, $2.15 billion renovation, known as the capital master plan, that is nearing completion. More visible than anything else is the robust yet crystalline new glass facade of the 39-story Secretariat building. — nytimes.com