According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) annual report about skyscrapers construction all over the world, 2014 was a record year. The CTBUH has determined that 97 buildings of 200 meters' height or greater were completed around the world in 2014. Nearly half of all high-rise buildings were being built in China. The 11 of these supertalls were 300 meters or higher. The 97 buildings completed in 2014 beat every previous year on record, including the previous record high of 81 completions in 2011. This was the "tallest year ever" by another measure: The sum of heights of all 200-meter-plus buildings completed across the globe in 2014 was 23,333 meters - setting another all-time record and breaking 2011's previous record of 19,852 meters. The number of 200-meter-plus buildings in existence has hit 935, a 352% increase from 2000, when only 266 existed. China completed the most 200-meter-plus buildings (58). This represents 60% of the global 2014 total. According to CTBUH their annual number of skyscrapers will increase related to economic development of China. The Philippines took second place with five completions, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar share position three with four completions, and the United States, Japan, Indonesia and Canada tie for fourth, with three completions each. At 541 meters, One World Trade Center was the tallest building to complete in 2014 and is now the world's third-tallest building. From 97 skyscrapers, built in 2014, 47 are designed for offices. Another 26 are classified as multi-functional center with a hotel, commercial and residential areas. If anything, 2015 promises to be more active than 2014 and indeed, any year previous. We currently project the completion of between 105 and 130 buildings of 200 meters' height or greater, eight to 15 of which will be supertalls, and one of which will be a megatall - Shanghai Tower (632 meters). Founded in 1969, the Council's mission is to disseminate multidisciplinary information on tall buildings and sustainable urban environments, to maximize the international interaction of professionals involved in creating the built environment, and to make the latest knowledge available to professionals in a useful form. Now CTBUH headquarters located in Chicago.

With its graveyards packed to capacity, the Italian city of Verona is planning to build the country's first high-rise cemetery, with space for 24 thousand graves stacked over 33 storeys. Council officials have given initial approval to plans submitted by Cielo Infinito - Infinite Sky - to build s futuristic tower topped by a chapel on the outskirts of the city where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet. For tomb with a view, customers can have their ashes stored, be buried in a coffin, or pick one of more than 2000 group chapels where family members can be interred together. A city spokesman said the idea had won support because Verona's main cemetery had been completely built around, and could no longer expand. No final decision has yet to be made, with a vote by all council members yet to be taken, he said. Although it will be Verona's tallest building, the spokesman said that it would be beyond the ring road and would not ruin the city's skyline. The spokesman said that a cash offer from Cielo Infinito for the land had helped to win officials round, as the council suffers funding cuts. "We tried to sell the land involved for US$ 932 thousand and had no takers, then this company came forward with an offer of US$ 14 million," he said. Last year a new vertical cemetery project introduced in Norway. In India, currently being built a vertical cemetery, which is called Moksha tower. Currently, the tallest sky cemetery is the Memorial Necropole Ecumenica III, a 32 storey high-rise in Santos, Brazil.

Dubai developer Emaar Properties and investment firm Dubai Holding on October 27 unveiled plans for a multi-million project known as "Dubai Creek Harbour at The Lagoons", which will contain the world's tallest twin towers with height more than 600 meters (1,968ft) each. Located within the two partners' joint master development, Mohammed bin Rashid City (MBR City), the project will be officially launched on November 1 in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London and Moscow and will be the first residences located in Dubai Creek Harbour, offering views over the harbour and Dubai skyline. "Dubai Creek Harbour at The Lagoons" will be developed on an open site and is expected to be larger than Downtown Dubai in terms of magnitude. Dubai Creek Residences will include six towers - two of which will be 40-storeys in height - with a variety of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments that will have unit area ranging between 75 - 200 square meters. The master plan will contain a dedicated retail precinct, pedestrian walkways and The Dubai Twin Towers, an iconic mixed-use development billed to be the tallest twin towers in the world. At present, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 452 meters and 88 floors hold the record for the tallest twin towers in the world. Dubai is already home to the world's tallest tower Burj Khalifa (828 meters), the world's highest residential tower Princess Tower (414 meters), the world's highest hotel building JW Marriott Marquis (355 meters) and the world's highest twisted tower "Infinity Tower" (307 meters).

UK-based Chetwood Architects just unveiled plans for the Phoenix Towers in Wuhan, China, which will be the world's tallest pair of skyscrapers upon completion. The supertall structures are the centerpiece of the firm's four master plans slated for construction in China. The Phoenix Towers are outfitted with wind turbines, solar panels, thermal chimneys and rainwater harvesting systems and they will act as an "environmental catalyst" to re-invigorate the city of Wuhan. The Phoenix Towers, designed in cooperation between Chetwood Architects and HuaYan Group, are expected to be built on a 47-hectare site on an island within a lake in the city of Wuhan in China. They are expected to reach the height of 1km, catching up with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture-designed Kingdom Tower in Jeddah; they would be the tallest pair of towers in the world. Inspired by the symbol of the Chinese Phoenix, which combines male and female principles in perfect balance, the architects designed two interdependent towers. The "male" one (Feng) feeds the "female" (Huang) with renewable energy and together they act as a beacon of sustainability in the area.

Instead of concrete jungles could our cities become urban forests of wooden skyscrapers>? Today swapping cement and steel for timber is the vision of a number of environmentally-minded architects who are planning high-rise buildings across the world. A Norwegian building society will this month start work on the world's tallest wooden apartment block, a 14-story structure which will rise to 49 meters, easily eclipsing the existing record holder in Melbourne, Australia. 'Treet', or The tree, will this year begin to rise up next to the Byfjorden in Central Bergen, after the Bergen and Omegn Building Society (BOB) begins work this month. As reported the Society it had now sold half of the 62 apartments. Ole Kleppe, who is managing the project for BOB, said that the builders planned to build the apartments around a gigantic timber frame formed of metre-thick columns of wooden 'glulam'. "The news is that we are combining load-bearing structures of glulam with apartments based on modules," he explained. "All other future high-rise timber projects of more than ten stories around the world today are somehow based on a concrete, steel or composite core." Once the modules are fixed in place early next year, the entire building will be wrapped in a glass and metal facade to protect the wooden structures from the notoriously wet Bergen climate. "The project is a pilot project to show how we can build high-rise timber projects that are sustainable," he said. "This project will bind approximately one thousand tons of CO2 in the wooden constructions -- an important contribution to reducing emissions of CO2." Recently a Yale University - led study has found that using more wood and less steel and concrete in building and bridge construction would substantially reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption despite an established forest conservation theory. Forte, in Melbourne, became the world's tallest timber frame apartment building at 32 meters, when it was completed at the end of 2012. In 2012 Architect Michael Green, one of three principals at McFarlane Green Biggar Architecture + Design (MGB), also announced about plans to build a 30-story wooden skyscraper in Vancouver.