The unusual 321-room Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort, located on the Taihu Lake between Nanjing and Shanghai, is set to open its doors. The oval-shaped building was designed by MAD Architects, as a part of the Starwood chain which is currently undergoing a drastic international expansion project. The US$ 1.5 billion resort measures over 100 meters high and 116 meters wide. The 27-storey Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort rises proudly in the Yangtze River Delta, the water covering the lowest two stories so that the form appears as a horseshoe shape rather than a complete ring as is really the case. As darkness falls, the form is illuminated with bands of LED lighting in different hues which reflect off the lake below in ripples of vivid color. In total the 2,200 square meter hotel has 321 guest rooms with 44 suites and 39 villas, all of which benefit from private balconies. The marble bathrooms include sunken bathtubs which look out over the waterfront and walk-in rainforest showers for a touch of luxury.

The Palais Lumiere, a 245 meter-high skyscraper planned for the ex-industrial area of Marghera, 9.5 kilometers from the center of Venice, will not now be built. Public and government opposition has forced fashion tycoon Pierre Cardin to cancel plans for his pet skyscraper project. Pierre Cardin and architect Rodrigo Basilicati have axed plans for their 60-story Palais Lumiere, due to criticism about how the building would clash with the Venetian landscape. In March 2012, Venice government has approved a 60-storey tower designed and funded by fashion designer Pierre Cardin. But as told project architect Rodrigo Basilicati "The decision was inevitable after over two years since presenting the initiative we could not get a formal approval on a deal with all public bodies involved. Cardin's Palace of Light was to be built on Venice's mainland in the former industrial area of Porto Marghera and was to boast swimming pools, gardens and ponds on the upper decks and a helipad on the roof. Originally set for a 2015 completion, the glass palace was to include housing, hotels, cinemas, restaurants, research centers as well as educational and sports facilities. The skyscraper's three towers were to be connected by six horizontal disks. Opposition and criticism over the glass-walled skyscraper began in 2012. Locals have been concerned over the impact of the 245-meter structure would have on the Venetian landscape and the medieval city. The opposition largely consists of are "Venetians and Italians who are tired of seeing Venice abused by the vast cruise ships and mounting examples of the crudest commercialism.

China will invest US$ 42 billion, to revive a long-stalled plan to build the world's longest undersea tunnel across the Bohai Strait linking the country's eastern and northeastern regions. Deep beneath the Bohai Sea, Chinese engineers may soon begin boring the longest submarine tunnel on the planet. At an estimated 123 kilometers long, it would surpass the combined length of world's two longest underwater tunnels-Japan's Seikan Tunnel and the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France. The tunnel will run from the port city of Dalian in northeastern Liaoning province to Yantai city in eastern Shandong. Today the drive between Dalian and Yantai takes around seven to eight hours. The Bohai Tunnel would shorten that to an hour. China announced plans in 1994 to build the tunnel, at a cost of US$ 10 billion, and set to be completed before 2010. But more than 20 years on, the project remains stuck in the planning stage without elaborating. Currently world's longest undersea tunnel is in Japan. The 54 kilometer Seikan tunnel links Honshu and Hokkaido islands and started operating in 1988 after more than two decades of construction. The Channel tunnel between England and France is about 51 kilometer long.

Munich, Germany now boasts the greenest office building in the world. NuOffice is off the charts in all sustainability metrics, easily achieving LEED Platinum status. European research project DIRECTION and scientists from Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics banded together to help design the uber-green building, hoping it will serve as a model for future new construction across the globe. In order to raise the bar on the building's energy efficiency, the science and research team sought to maximize the building's passive energy use, driving down energy consumption and introducing renewable energy sources as main suppliers to the building. NuOffice's roof alternates between lush, insulating greenery and a powerful photovoltaic array that adds to the building's power needs. Radiant heating and cooling systems, which are connected to a complex district heating system in the basement that also employs well water to cool in the summer, help to keep energy usage low and the interior comfortable. The building's inner courtyard design fosters not only an additional green space, but also creates natural cross breezes and an influx of daylight on both the inside and outside perimeters of NuOffice. Thickly insulated exterior walls and triple-glazed windows also keep the interior climate comfortable. The newly opened building's energy usage is being closely monitored and recorded. The team hopes that by the end of the year the energy consumption will consume just 30 killowatt hours per square meter per year, compared to the average of 100 to 150 killowatt hours in a standard office space.

In recent years China has witnessed lots of phenomenal constructions. The world's longest high-speed rail line (2.298-kilometer-long), which spans over half of China, began operating at the end of last year. In April, 2012 the world's highest and longest tunnel-to-tunnel bridge was commissioned in China, which linked together two tunnels 1176 meters apart, and 355 meters above Hunan's Dehang Canyon. Again in 2012 Chinese mass media reports, that Changsha, China's Hunan province will be home to world's tallest building, which will be built in just 7 months. 220-store building will be 838 meters high. Today China put into operation world's largest building - New Century Global Center . The superlatives in China continue -- the latest symbol of China's "bigger is much, much better" ethos is open for business. Located in Chengdu (population 14 million), capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China, the New Century Global Center is the "largest freestanding building in the world," Chinese officials say. Though the words "world's largest" usually bring to mind an image of a towering skyscraper, this project actually isn't all that tall. But it's certainly big. At 500 meters long, 400 meters wide and 100 meters high, the 1.7-million-square-meter mega-structure is capable of housing 20 Sydney Opera Houses and almost three times the size of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The Global Center, which opened June 28, is home to business offices, hotels, movie theaters, shopping malls, a faux Mediterranean village and family-themed attractions such as a water park called Paradise Island.