Would you spend US$ 300 a night to sleep underground? You might, once you see the jaw-dropping designs for China's latest hotel project. For more than a decade, China has been a front-runner in the world's skyscraper race. Now the country is taking the pole position in digging "groundscrapers" -- enormous structures built mostly underground. As reported CNN International, most recently, ground has been broken on construction of a high-end hotel at the foot of Shanghai's Tianmashan in a 100-meter-deep pit. Developed by Shanghai Shimao Property Group and to be managed by InterContinental Hotels Group, the hotel, named InterContinental Shimao Shanghai Wonderland, is expected to extend 19 stories into the bottom of the pit. Once completed, in late 2014 or early 2015, the deepest story of the luxury resort will be approximately 700 meters lower than the top floor of the world's-highest-hotel-to-be, the Shanghai Tower J Hotel in Shanghai Tower, set for completion around the same time. Located about 45 kilometers southwest of Shanghai's city center, the pit in Tianmushan is 100 meters deep, 240 meters long and 160 meters wide. The lowest 20 meters are filled with stagnant rainwater, which the hotel will retain. Construction of the 380-room InterContinental Shimao Shanghai Wonderland commenced last month. The 19-story hotel will have three levels above ground, and 16 underground, including an underwater restaurant. A 60-meter glass curtain will be built to mimic a waterfall next to the resort's main structure. The pit has served as a quarry since the 1950s, then it has been abandoned since the year 2000. Shimao purchased the surrounding land in 2006 in order to build Shimao Shanghai Wonderland, a large-scale theme park integrating hospitality, leisure and entertainment elements. The hotel is planned as part of the wonderland complex. Designed by UK-based engineering firm Atkins, the company behind the ostentatious Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, the quarry hotel design bagged a Gold Medal at last year's commercial real estate MIPIM Asia Awards. Industry experts believe nightly room rates will start from US$ 320, twice the price currently charged by nearby five-star hotels. Shimao is investing a total of US$ 555 million in the 428 thousand square meter Shimao Shanghai Wonderland, of which US$ 95 million will go toward the subterranean resort. Hotel planners are considering taking advantage of the site's surrounding cliffs by hosting activities such as rock climbing and bungee jumping.

Elevated land-based islands are what one architect is proposing for the Tohoku region of north-east Japan, the area that was devastated by last March's magnitude 9 earthquake and the mega-tsunamis it triggered. As reported The NewScientist, Keiichiro Sako of Sako Architects in Tokyo has created a blueprint in which groups of these islands form entire towns. They are designed to protect people living in low-lying areas from future tsunamis. Tohoku Sky Village is not just an architect's flight of fancy: one municipality in the affected region is making moves towards building one in its locality and others could follow. Most islands will be used for residential purposes, with between 100 and 500 houses and apartments. Fuel stations, waste disposal and storage facilities, and car parks are on lower floors. Commercial islands, meanwhile, will house factories and processing facilities for industries such as fisheries and agriculture. As well as lifting residents high above the destructive power of the waves, the design comes with a number of safety features. A reinforced gate at the back of each island automatically closes after a tsunami warning, while steps up the sides let people climb to safety. Power is off-grid, from renewable energy sources including wind and solar, to ensure supply following a disaster. Lithium-ion batteries act as backup. The islands' oval shape is also important. Flat surfaces take the full force of a body of water, but an oval one allows water to flow around. Each three-storey island would offer 90 thousand square meters of usable space and be bolted deep into the bedrock via vast steel pillars. The exterior walls are made of 50 centimeter-thick reinforced concrete, while utility spaces on the bottom floor are compartmentalized in a radial formation for even stress distribution - rather like the spokes in a bicycle wheel. At the centre of each cluster of islands would be the administrative area, home to municipal offices, schools, businesses and leisure facilities. The ambitious plan also features the world's first indoor marina to protect the local fishing fleet. Critics point to the complex issue of how the reconstruction will be funded. Yasuaki Onoda of the Department of Architecture and Building Science at Tohoku University says that while the idea is sound, estimated costs of US$ 250 million per island are prohibitive. To mitigate these costs, Tohoku Sky Village will recycle debris from the disaster for use in some building components. Sako also believes the islands will become a tourist attraction. Previously, we wrote about another project named "Levitating Home" developed by a Japanese architectural firm Air Danshin Systems which also aimed to protect the public from the earthquake.

Venice has approved a 60-storey tower designed and funded by fashion designer Pierre Cardin, reported British online publication BDonline. It will be the centerpiece of a vast project to build a whole new suburb on reclaimed land north of the historic city. City governor Luca Zaia described the Palais Lumiere project as Venice's Eiffel Tower and likened Cardin to Lorenzo the Magnificent, Florence's great Medici patron. Cardin, who was born near Venice 89 years ago, described the scheme as the "pinnacle" of his career. The tower will be built in the former industrial area of Porto Marghera and will be at the heart of a 1.6 million square meter project that will clean up polluted brown field areas and reclaim further land from the lagoon. Cardin's striking design involves 3 separate fins joined at a number of levels by six horizontal discs accessed by lifts. Its height and diameter will both be 244 meters. Conceived as a gateway to Venice, it will be a hub for the creative industries including a fashion and design college, exhibition space and incubators for start-up businesses. Some reports said it would also contain a hotel, restaurants, indoor and outdoor pools, a cinema, roof gardens, a heliport and even a hospital. The wider development will include 35 thousand square meter of residential, 25 thousand square meter of hotels and restaurants, 115 thousand square meter of offices, 600 thousand square meter of landscaping, 100 thousand square meter of parking, plus new infrastructure. The city authorities this week gave Cardin permission to enter a simplified planning process.

Chicago City officials recently unveiled the proposed concepts for the long-delayed Bloomingdale Trail, a proposed park and multiuse path of nearly three miles that would be built atop a dormant elevated railroad line on the city's Northwest Side. It also would help connect other parks throughout the area, reported the Chicago Tribune. As reported The inhabitat, the Bloomingdale rail line once served as an important transport corridor, but was then abandoned in the early 1990s. Since the late '90s, the idea has been floating around to convert the elevated rail line into a public park. The Bloomingdale Trail and Park has been in the works for many years now, but significant progress has recently been made. Designed by ARUP, with the help of Ross Barney Architects and Michael van Valkenburgh Associates, the elevated trail and park will be 4.3 kilometers long and will feature bike and pedestrian paths. The gently curving and undulating trail will allow bikers to go up to 32 kmph, and there will be separate paths available for pedestrians. What is not used by paths will be available for public art, lighting, play areas, seating, and vegetation. The landscaping will encourage new wildlife to converge in the city and will contribute to an improved environmental quality. The path would be at least 3 meters wide, with 0.6 meters of clearance on each side for a total of 4.2 meters. About 1.9 kilometers of the trial would have a separate pedestrian path that would run parallel to the multiuse path. Visitors would reach the trail, now raised about 4.6 meters above street level, from eight access points. The design team is proposing 8 access points along the path spaced at about 800 meters apart. In the beginning, the rail line was built to keep people off of it, but now the line will encourage access via sloping parks. The multiphase project is expected to cost about US$ 70 million, when it's all said and done, but the first phase should cost about US$ 46 million. To date the city has collected US$ 37 million in federal anti-congestion and air-quality funding and US$ 7 million more was just donated through private funding. The design team is still working out the details, especially with regards to privacy for neighbors of the park and safety issues, but they hope to begin construction in 2013 with parts of the park open by 2014. For Bloomingdale Trail project as a starting point served the famous suspension park High Line in New York. This band of flowers, trees, shrubs, viewing platforms and walkways were built on the basis of the long abandoned "suspension" railroad. On April 10, 2006, Mayor Bloomberg presided over a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction. The park was designed by the James Corner's New York-based landscape architecture firm Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with planting design from Piet Oudolf of the Netherlands and engineering design by Buro Happold. The park was so attractive, that in 2010 was decided to increase its length by half. In 2011 this idea was brought to life. On March 12, was unveiled the initial design concepts for the rail yards section of the High Line. Friends of the High Line released the initial design plans for the third and final section of the High Line at the Hudson Rail Yards. The renderings from architects James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro are available on the High Line's website (and our photo gallery!), and they show the final section of the elevated park incorporating familiar elements, as well as several brand new features. The design will be closely integrated to the massive Hudson Yards development. The newly revealed renderings show the architects' initial visions for the final section of the High Line, but the details are not finalized The third section's total cost will be about US$ 90 million (which comes from donors, not the city's pockets), and it will be open to the public by spring 2014.

Instead of concrete jungles could our cities become urban forests of wooden skyscrapers? 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. As reported CNN, Architect Michael Green, one of three principals at McFarlane Green Biggar Architecture + Design (mgb), has plans for a 30-story wooden skyscraper in Vancouver, while plans are afoot in Norway and Austria for 17 and 20-story building that use wood as the main building material, eschewing steel and concrete. The modern wood materials have been around for 20 years, but until recently they have been quite niche or used only in low-rise buildings. What has changed is the way in which architects and builders are thinking about using wood. The real change came when people started about climate change. Steel and concrete are great but not environmentally friendly. Cutting down trees to make buildings doesn't immediately sound eco-friendly either, but if sourced from sustainably managed forests (like those in Europe and North America), it can be more environmentally sensitive. Wood buildings lock in carbon dioxide for the life cycle of a structure, while the manufacture of steel and concrete produces large amounts of CO2 -- the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimate that for every 10 kilos of cement created, six to nine kilos of CO2 are produced. Green's "Tallwood" structure is designed with large panels of laminated strand lumber -- a composite made of strands of wood glued together. Other mass timber products use layers of wood fused together at right angles that making them immensely strong and able to be used as lode bearing infrastructure, walls and floors. Currently one of the highest modern wooden buildings is in London. Called the Stadthaus, Murray Grove, it's a nine-story residential building that stands at just under 30 meters (98 feet). Even the lift shafts and stairwells are made from wood. According to Craig Liddell, the commercial director of KLH UK, the company that developed the cross-laminated timber for the building, the 15 stories is possible before having to use other materials like steel. The cross-laminated timber used on the Stadthaus is classified as air-tight, making it one of London's most energy efficient buildings. As a pre-fabricated structure it also took less time to construct and was cheaper than a conventional steel and concrete building.