Paris’s Ugliest Building Is Getting a Glow Up—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week

• Paris’s Tour Montparnasse building, long maligned for being an eyesore looming over the city’s skyline, is finally getting a $700-million facelift. The redesign, by Italian architect Rezno Piano, will add promenades and a tree-lined piazza, though some locals have concerns—one worries the renovation will disrupt a colony of pigeons that have made the complex its home. (The New York Times)

• Landscape architect Dan Barefoot spent more than a decade balancing his work with elite training to compete in skeleton for Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina. Here’s how the designer juggled his career and racing headfirst down bobsled tracks at up to 80 miles an hour. (Landscape Architecture Magazine)
• In an effort to build more housing, several states are rolling back a long-standing rule requiring apartment buildings taller than three stories to have two staircases, arguing that single stair plans allow housing to be built on smaller lots, which would, in turn, make them cheaper to develop. But as the change spreads, fire officials warn the shift could complicate emergency response, especially in more rural areas where response times are slower. (The New York Times)

• Los Angeles has deployed five hundred goats to chew through overgrown, invasive vegetation in the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve as part of an eco-friendly solution to reduce wildfire risk ahead of the 2028 Olympics. In other words, the city’s four-legged squad is truly the G.O.A.T. of landscaping. (Smart Cities Dive)

• A new study of a high-end Honolulu condo project found that building luxury housing can trigger what is known as a vacancy chain, where, as residents move into new, more expensive housing, it frees up older, cheaper apartments that become available for lower-income residents. (The Atlantic)

Top photo by Ludovic Marin/POOL/AFP via Getty Images