Many may perceive China as a crowded, polluted country, but that legacy is changing. Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture just unveiled its master plan for Chengdu Tianfu District Great City, a self-sustaining satellite city that offers a solution to the problems of overburdened infrastructure and high pollution levels that assail many of China's major urban centers. The project envisions a city that avoids the high energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with suburban sprawl. According to the architects, Great City will be developed by Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co., Ltd. over the next eight years. When completed, it will be home to about 30 thousand families totaling 80 thousand people. A look at an aerial blueprint of Great City reveals the secret to achieving its low consumption, low pollution lifestyle: the distance from any location in the city to any other location will be a 15 minute walk, all but eliminating the need for most automobiles. The city is built around a regional transit hub, which connects Great City to Chengdu and surrounding areas via mass transit, although it's expected that most people will be able to work inside the development itself. Thanks to green building techniques and use of renewable energy technology, Smith + Gordon expect that Great City will use 48 percent less energy and 58 percent less water than a conventional development with a similar population size. It will also produce 89 percent less landfill waste and generate 60 percent less carbon dioxide. But the architects realize that building a truly green city isn't only about choosing eco-friendly materials or installing solar panels - it's also about planning. The 1.3 million square meters urbanized area will be surrounded by a 2 million square meters buffer landscape, whose natural topography-including valleys and bodies of water-will be integrated into the city itself. Within the city, 15 percent of the land will be reserved for parks and green space, while 60 percent will be earmarked for construction. The remaining 25 percent will be devoted to infrastructure, roads and pedestrian streets. "We've designed this project as a dense vertical city that acknowledges and in fact embraces the surrounding landscape-a city whose residents will live in harmony with nature rather than in opposition to it," remarked Gordon Gill. "Great City will demonstrate that high-density living doesn't have to be polluted and alienated from nature. Everything within the built environment of Great City is considered to enhance the quality of life of its residents. Quite simply, it offers a great place to live, work and raise a family."

The thinnest house in the world built between two tower blocks in Warsaw. The house measures 1.2 meters at its widest point and 71 centimeters at its narrowest. The building has been designed by Jakub Szczesny, who took his inspiration from the work of Israeli writer Etgar Keret. The new house is only 1.2 meters, but it comes with a bathroom, a kitchen and a bedroom. Architect Jakub Szczesny said that he designed the two-story aluminum and plastic house three years ago to fill a narrow space between a pre-war house and a modern apartment block in downtown Warsaw. The Foundation of Polish Modern Art and Warsaw Town Hall helped fund the project, which they consider an art work. But it may not be easy for the tenants. The triangular building runs 10 meters deep at the base and stands 9 meters tall. Metal and aluminum pipes hold the structure nearly 3 meters above the ground, and visitors will climb a metal staircase and squeeze through a hole to enter the building. The ground floor contains a toilet and shower, a kitchen with a sink and cupboards, a table for two, and a bean bag sofa. Another metal ladder goes to the second floor, which has a nearly double-size bed, a table and a chair. Szczesny told that the building achieves two goals: filing an empty city space and linking Warsaw's World War II tragedy, when more than half the city was destroyed, with modern buildings that went up afterward. The first tenant Etgar Keret, an Israeli writer whose ancestors died in Poland during the Holocaust, moved to the house. "It is a kind of a memorial to my family," said Keret, explaining that his mother's and father's families died in the Holocaust under Nazi Germany's occupation of Poland, and his paternal grandfather died in Warsaw's 1944 uprising against the Nazis. The structure has been named Keret House after the Israeli writer. He said he only visits Warsaw twice a year, so other tenants will be able to try out the tight quarters of the non-profit building for free, too.

The Crocus Group Holding has launched a project to build 14 skyscrapers at the 66-kilometer mark of the Moscow Ring Road, next to the multifunctional Crocus City complex. The new project is to boast a total area of 1 million square meters of realty, RBC daily reported, citing Emin Agalarov, Crocus Group Holding's deputy president. The first phase of the project, which is scheduled to be completed till 2016, is to include three high-rise buildings - a 51-story office skyscraper (137 thousand square meters), a residential complex of 500 apartments 50 thousand square meters) and Europe's largest Holiday Inn Hotel at 1,000 rooms (81 thousand square meters). The property is to also feature a restaurant, fitness center, spa and parking for 900 cars. All three are to be joined by a three-story-high walkway. The concept for the development was created by the holding's own architectural firm together with American architects Kling Stubbins. Investment in the initial phase is to be approximately US$ 3 billion. Crocus Group initially called the project "Crocus City Manhattan" when announcing it three years ago, but the company suspended the project, focusing its resources on the construction of facilities for the recent APEC summit. The project is now simply called the multifunctional complex, but, according to Agalarov, it will also be "reminiscent of New York." Recall that Emin Agalarov is married to Leyla Aliyeva, the elder daughter of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Turkey's Teknopark Istanbul, a hub of research and development efforts similar to the Silicon Valley but for the country's defense and related industries, will be completed in 8-10 years, reported the Hurrietdaily. After construction it will generate nearly US$ 10 billion for Turkey's economy annually. Teknopark Istanbul will operate a 750 thousand square meter indoor space at Sabiha Gokcen Airport, east of Istanbul, accommodating more than 30 thousand people and targeting US$ 10 billion in defense and nondefense business annually, to become one of Europe's largest technology parks. The site will bring together companies and many universities in Istanbul, targeting strategic fields like aviation, maritime, electronics, information technology, nanotechnology, energy and automotive, biotechnologies, automation systems and robot technologies. Its major shareholders are the Under secretariat for Defense Industries (SSM), with a 45 percent stake, and the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (?TO), with a 40 percent stake. Construction work began late last year, when Science, Industry and Technology Minister Nihat Ergun and SSM chief Murad Bayar laid its foundation. Currently there are 37 teknoparks in Turkey, which include 1200 companies.

Although there is still no official word on when construction will start on Kingdom Tower, there are signs of progress. Saudi BAUER Foundation Contractors Ltd. This week announced it had signed a deal for the enabling works for Kingdom, the one-kilometer-tall tower planned for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. "The enabling works include 270 bored piles of 1.5 and 1.8 meter diameters, which have to be installed into the difficult ground conditions down to depths of 110 meters in order to provide the building's foundations," the company said in a press release. Bauer also did the piling work for Burj Khalifa, currently the world's tallest building. The foundation work on Kingdom is scheduled to begin before the end of December and take about 10 months, the company said. The contract for the work is worth approximately US$ 32 million, the company said. Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has given the go ahead for the construction of the world's tallest tower in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah by signing a US$ 1.2 billion contract with Bin Laden Group on August 2, 2011. On January 2012, local mass media reported, that Azerbaijan plans to build the world's tallest tower within the framework of Caspian Island project. Initially, the height of Azerbaijan Tower planned to be 560 meters, but parameters were changed. The developer of Caspian Island Avesta concern decided that the high of 185 floors tower to be 1050 meters, and it will be commissioned in 2018-2019. In this August Chinese Broad Sustainable Building Company made sensational announcement, 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. It is also reported, that construction will begin in this November.