Conservation work at the crumbling ancient Roman city of Pompeii began. The whole project budget estimated US$ 142 million and the EU is contributing US$ 56 million to the project which should be completed by 2015. The new preservation campaign follows a series of structural collapses at the popular tourist site near Naples -- including at the House of Gladiators, a building used for training the arena warriors, which collapsed into a heap of rubble in 2010. The collapses have been blamed on years of mismanagement and underfunding. Buried by falling ash when nearby Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, buildings, streets and even curled-up corpses were found preserved when Pompeii was rediscovered in 1748. Today, the site draws 2.3 million visitors a year. Now work is beginning on two buildings, known as the Criptoportico and the Casa dei Dioscuri. The fresh funding will be used to help protect the site from heavy rains that have contributed to the collapses, and to restore frescoes and increase security. The new funds also will be put toward strengthening crumbling Roman villas, restoring damaged frescoes and improving video surveillance across the 44-hectare site.

A mosque set to be built in the western province of Bursa will use solar and wind power to produce electricity. Nilufer Trade Center Mosque, which is set to be completed in 2015, may be the first mosque in Turkey that produces and uses renewable energy. Celik Erengezgin, the architect of the mosque project, believes that the project will be an example for other mosques. Solar panels will be placed on top of the mosque. A wind turbine will be installed on the minaret. Also snow and rain water will be collected for the worshippers' water needs. The mosque will produce its own energy and sell what it does not use. The mosque will produce 120 kilowatt of electricity but consumes only 50 kilowatt. The remaining amount can be sold to the state. Erengezgin said Turkey's Religious Affairs Department had responded positively to his project. He also wanted to produce electricity from the pressure exerted on the floor by the worshippers during prayers. This is not part of the current project but he hopes to implement it also. "We will tell the worshippers, you can charge your cell phones here, because you have produced this energy, while praying on the floor of the mosque".

Asian-based hotel group Alila Hotels & Resorts will open its first hotel in Oman at the end of 2014. The luxury establishment will be set in the Jabal Akhdar mountain range, a region of the Sultanate that has seen limited tourist development, two hours' drive from the capital Muscat. This new hotel called Alila Jabal Akhdar will offer 78 rooms, six suites and two royal suites as well as a hillside restaurant. There will also be a pool, a spa, a fitness center and an event space. This establishment at an altitude of 2000 meters above sea level will offer all its visitors a luxurious retreat in a part of the sultanate that is largely unknown to tourists. This hotel will be the group's first establishment in the Middle East. Alila also has plans to open more establishments in Indonesia, China and Europe.

Kenya's president has launched a US$ 14.5 billion project to build a new city intended to be an IT business hub and dubbed "Africa's Silicon Savannah". It will take 20 years to build Konza Technology City. The IT hub will be built over four phases starting with the technology centres. The new city is situated about 60 kilometers from the capital, Nairobi. It also will be just 50 kilometers from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and 500 kilometers from Mombasa and its ports, will provide a range of facilities suitable for IT companies and businesses to flourish. Konza is part of the government's ambitious Vision 2030 initiative to improve much-neglected infrastructure over the next 18 years. It is hoped that more than 20,000 IT jobs will be created in Konza by 2015, and more than 200,000 jobs by 2030. The 2011-hectare site will have a residential area comprising around 37 thousand homes to accommodate 185 thousand people. Over 600 hectares of Konza will be marked off as green corridors, and Kenya Wildlife Conservancy has pledged to safeguard the ecology of the surrounding savannah. It will also include a Modern Business Processing Outsourcing Park, Science Park, Convention Center, Mega Mall, Data Centres, Financial District, World-class Hotels, local and international schools and a championship golf course.

Construction began on world's tallest modular building, a 32-storey residential tower in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development by Manhattan-based firm SHoP Architects. Nearly 60 percent of the B2 tower will be prefabricated off-site. This means the complex will produce 70-90 percent less waste and will reduce energy consumption by 67 percent during the building phase. Controversy has swirled around this strategy, as it will cut union worker wages from US$ 85 an hour for on-site construction to only US$ 35 an hour in a factory setting. The development also drastically cuts the number of workers needed, leaving only 125 lucky laborers on the job. The flipside to this is that the overall cost and energy will be also being cut. B2 is the first of three new residential towers planned around the Barclays Center, the 19,000-seat indoor sports and music arena that opened this September. Both were designed by Manhattan-based firm SHoP Architects as part of the controversial Atlantic Yards development. The three buildings will provide around 1500 residential units in total, half of which will be earmarked as affordable housing. B2's 363 apartments are expected to be available for occupancy in summer 2014. While developers and city officials hail B2 as the world's tallest modular building, construction is also set to begin on a modular tower in Changsha, China, which at 838 meters, or 220 story's, would be the tallest building in the world - and construction firm Broad Sustainable Building says the tower, called Sky City, will go up in just 90 days. Recently the prefab Hotel in China's south-central Hunan province standing 30 stories was erected in an incredible 360 hours or in 15 days. The hotel built Chinese sustainable-building firm Broad Group and the building is designed to withstand up a 9.0 magnitude earthquake - and even boasts energy-efficient building techniques. In 2010 Broad Group during 6 days built another prefab building, the 15-story Ark Hotel in the Changsha Province, demonstrating fantastic speed of prefab building construction.