Snapshots of the fortnight (November 3 to 17)

An exterior view of 390 Madison Avenue, an office building in midtown Manhattan in New York, that is undergoing complete reconstruction. A new skyline rising across Manhattan poses a challenge for the owners of the city's ageing office buildings as they face expensive overhauls in order to compete against a wave of amenity-rich towers nearing completion. Manhattan has the oldest office infrastructure in the world, and record levels of available space by 2017 will test the moxie of landlords who are losing top tenants to new buildings mostly going up in Lower Manhattan and on the West Side