As reported by Yahoo.com, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on November 1 laid the cornerstone for the Grand Mosque of Algiers, a US$ 1.3 billion project that should become the world's third largest mosque. China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) last month was awarded the contract to build the huge monument, facing the sea in the east of Algiers, over four years. The mosque will sit on 20 hectares in the Mohammadia area of the capital. Its minaret soaring 270 meters into the sky, it will hold 120 thousand worshippers, feature a library of 1 million works and seating for 2 thousand. It will also house a museum and a research centre and become the world's third largest mosque after those in Mecca and Saudi Arabia in Medina. Algiers currently has three grand mosques: "Djamaa el-Kebir" built in the 11th century, "Djamaa el-Djedid" built in 1660, and the "Ketchaoua" at the foot of the Casbah, also built during the Ottoman rule in the 17th century.

Social networking site Facebook is to build its first data centre outside the United States in the northern Swedish town of Lulea, awarding an initial construction contract of US$ 121 million, reported Reuters. The data centre, set to be the largest of its kind in Europe, will take advantage of the climate in Lulea, among the coldest in Sweden, to cool tens of thousands of servers. Swedish construction group NCC said it was part of a joint venture with two U.S. companies, DPR Construction and Fortis Construction, which had won a contract of US$ 121 million for the first of three server buildings in the data centre. The data centre will be the northern most of its size on Earth. It is Facebook's first in Europe and will serve more than 800 million site users. Facebook said in a statement it chose Lulea, despite its remoteness some 1000 kilometers north of Swedish capital Stockholm, because its cold climate would be good for cooling and that it could provide environmentally friendly hydro-power. The three server buildings will have an area of 28,000 square meters each. Construction takes place in three phases and begins instantly. The first building is to be operational within a year and the entire facility is scheduled for completion by 2014.

As reported by english.chosen.com, this week construction began on the Yongsan Landmark Tower, which is expected to be the most expensive building in the world once it is completed, standing 100 stories tall and rising half a kilometer into the sky. The tower is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2016. Scheduled to be built in Seoul, inside the international business district in Yongsan, the tower will not quite measure up to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (162 stories, 828 meters) or the Lotte Super Tower being built in Jamsil (123 stories, 555 meter), but it will be the most expensive building per square unit. At present, each 1 square meter costs around US$ 3,150. The total construction cost is US$ 1.2 billion and the entire price tag for the building, including the land, stands at more than US$ 3.4 billion. It is more expensive than the Burj Khalifa, which cost around US$ 3,000 million per 1 square meter and costs 40 percent more than the Samsung Group headquarters in Seocho-dong, which cost US$ 2,400 per 1 square meter. Design alterations and the use of more high-tech materials could bump the price tag up further. The skyscraper will be packed with cutting-edge equipment and facilities. The structure was designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, who created the Pompidou Center in Paris and London Bridge Tower. Samsung Corporation, which also served as the main contractor on the Burj Khalifa and Taipei 101 (101 stories, 508 meters), the latter in Taiwan, will build the new architectural landmark in Yongsan. It will house the offices of global businesses and will offer a wide range of high-tech functions. First of all, the skyscraper will be equipped with the fastest elevators in the world that travel at 800 meters per minute, more than six times faster than the lifts installed in high-rise condominiums in Korea (120 m/min). In order to withstand the staggering weight of 100 stories of steel and concrete, ultra-high intensity concrete will be used to build the skyscraper, capable of supporting up to 800 kg per square cm.

Beijing has started construction on a new mega-airport that will be roughly the size of Bermuda and have nine runways, reported The Telegraph. The new airport will be called Beijing Daxing International and when it opens in 2015, the Chinese capital will become the world's busiest aviation hub, handling around 370 thousand passengers a day. It is only three years since the opening of Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital Airport, a sweeping structure designed by Sir Norman Foster that is far bigger than all of Heathrow's five terminals combined. But an enormous boom in China's aviation industry has already left the capital's existing facilities stretched to breaking point. "It is impossible to add even one more flight to the tight daily schedule of the Capital airport," said Li Jiaxing, the minister in charge of China's Civil Aviation Administration. The existing airport in Beijing has an annual capacity of 75 million passengers. Last year it handled 73 million. In two years, it will be totally packed. And it cannot be expanded infinitely. Instead, Beijing's planners have found a 54 thousand square meters site to the south of the city, in the suburb of Daxing. Currently the site is around an hour's drive from the city centre, but planners are pencilling in an extension to Beijing's metro, and perhaps even a high-speed train line. The new facility will not only serve Beijing, but also Tianjin and parts of Hebei as the Chinese capital morphs into a mega-city, its suburbs merging into those of the cities around it. The airport will be Beijing's third, after Capital and the smaller, primarily military, Nanyuan airport. Beijing Daxing is likely to have eight runways for civilian use and a ninth for military use, according to Yao Weihui, the general manager of China United Airlines. "The suggested location is a place with few residents and buildings, so a lot of runways can be built," he added.

According to news agency Xinhuanet, Shanghai, China's economic center, plans to build a super-sized exhibition center that is likely to become the world's largest, announced a municipal official Sha Hailin. The Shanghai municipal government has set up a headquarters to command construction of ancillary facilities to the China Expo Center, which will be located at the Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District, said Sha Hailin, deputy secretary general of the Shanghai municipal government, at a press briefing. The center, composed of a main exhibition hall and ancillary facilities, will cover an area of about 104 hectares, with an indoor area of 400 thousand square meters and 100 thousand square meters of outdoor exhibition areas. The project will cost US$ 3.6 billion, and the first-phase investment has been secured, without elaborating on the amount.