Some West Side Manhattanites might not be too thrilled to hear that French architect Jean Nouvel has won the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. The award is to be announced today, according to The New York Times.

Mr. Nouvel, 62, has two buildings in New York City: 40 Mercer, a luxury condo building completed last year in Soho; and a proposed 75-story condo and hotel tower slated for 53 West 53rd Street, next-door to the Museum of Modern Art. On March 13, Community Board 5 voted 21-1 to deny the transfer of air rights from two landmarked buildings to the site for the tower.  read more »

The developers of the new condo development at One Madison Park on East 22nd Street have selected the New York firm of Harvard achitecture and urban design professor Rem Koolhaas to design part of the two-building development. Mr. Koolhaas will design the 22-story part of the development (there's a 60-story building, too).

Press release after the jump.  read more »

Ah, what fun we could be having in New York if only our zoning laws were a wee different: bridges between buildings, buildings on top of bridges, bridges on top of other bridges, and little trolley cars whizzing in and out. Some of the visions going up in the Skyscraper Museum next Wednesday put Jules Verne to shame (although they were less prescient). The exhibit, “New York Modern," is the first of three shows to trace the history of the skyscraper city from the New York that early 20th-century artists imagined to Shanghai as it is being built today.

“By 1900, the idea of unbridled growth and inevitably increasing congestion was lampooned in cartoons in the popular press and critiqued by prominent architects and urban reformers,” the museum says.

Not even William R. Leigh, who drew up this picture of a Garden of Urban Delights a century ago, could imagine how the Zoning Resolution of 1916 would really crimp our style.

Renowned architect David Mandl passed away on August 4 following a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 53.

Mr. Mandl made a name for himself in New York by being the first architect to transform a downtown office building into a luxury apartment building with 45 Wall Street. A New York native and Pratt Institute graduate, Mr. Mandl was a member of the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA) and a former board member of the New York Society of Architects. He was also president of the firm Meltzer/Mandl Architects.  read more »