The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is the world's foremost authority on tall buildings. Every year, beginning from 2007, the Council issues seven Tall Building awards annually; two Lifetime Achievement awards and five Best Tall Building awards which recognize excellence in design and construction. Following an open call period for nominations, the Council's Awards Committee selects the winner of each category. The Best Tall Building Overall is selected from the four regional winners and announced at the CTBUH Annual Awards Ceremony & Dinner. One winner is chosen from each of four geographical regions (Americas, Asia & Australasia, Europe, and Middle East & Africa) and a further award presents the title of "Best Tall Building Overall" to one of the four regional winners. The 2010 finalist Tall Buildings were: Bank of America Tower, New York; The Pinnacle @ Duxton, Singapore; Broadcasting Place, Leeds, UK; and Burj Khalifa, Dubai. The Best Tall Building of 2010 from 4 regional finalists announced Broadcasting Place, Leeds, or as it is called "Rusty High rise " for the rusty facade feature of the 70 m high building. A key element in the design of the building is the irregular elevations, which have been tailored to optimize daylight and reduce solar penetration. An innovative analysis of the building facades was undertaken, to calculate the optimum quantity and distribution of glazing/shading at all points on the facade in order to ensure high levels of natural day lighting but without overheating. The design implements natural ventilation where practicable, ground source heat pumps, and a car-free development with bike parking provisions. In 2009, the Best Tall Building 2009 prize was aworded to Beijing residential complex Linked Hybrid. The 220,000 square meter pedestrian-oriented complex, sited adjacent to the site of old city wall of Beijing, aims to counter the current urban developments in China by creating a new twenty-first century porous urban space, inviting and open to the public from every side. Another award from CTBUH-2010 Global Icon Award, received Burj Khalifa, Dubai. The unprecedented height of the Burj Khalifa required design techniques, building systems, and construction practices to all be rethought and in many cases new applications developed in order to create a practical and efficient building. The building's "Y" shaped plan provides the maximum amount of perimeter for windows in living spaces and bedrooms without developing a large amount of internal unusable area.

The Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI(National Museum of XXI Century Arts) Museum in Rome was announced as a winner of 2010 "World's Best Building of the Year" during the third annual World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Barcelona. Jurors included Arata Isozaki, Barry Bergdoll, Enrique Norten, and Hanif Kara. When Zaha Hadid entered into competition in 1999 for Museum design, she employed only 30 people. Today, her staff numbers more than 350 and she is building major projects around the world. Due to its complex geometry, the building is not easily understandable at first. On both the inside and the outside, the museum works as a series of connected ribbons, a composition that conjures the spirit of Baroque architecture with its play of convex and concave forms. And like buildings designed by Borromini and Bernini, MAXXI manipulates daylight in an almost mystical way - bringing it in from above, through glass roofs shielded by metal grilles, adjustable louvers, and concrete fins. Earlier this year, the Royal Institute of British Architects announced MAXXI Museum the winner of the2010 Stirling Prize with £20,000 award.

Creative artists from all over the world arrived to Swedish Lapland to create the largest Ice Hotel in the world. The winter season 2010/2011 will be the 21th for the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden. The idea of Ice Hotel was born in 1990's; Jukkasjarvi has been always attracting ice carving artists, as it is located beyond the Arctic Circle. One winter day in 1990, when French artist Jannot Derid was holding an exhibition of his ice carvings in the igloo (a snowhouse originally built by the Inuit) , the number of visitors turned to be larger than it was expected and lack of available rooms forced some of them stay in that igloo at night. Locals covered blocks of ice inside the igloo with reindeer skin and let visitors sleep on them, inside their sleeping bags. In the next morning, the visitors, who spend the night in igloo, were enthusiastically speaking about the "magic" opportunity to sleep inside the ice shed and also clamed that it was not cold inside at all. In the second half of November, when in Jukkasjarvi temperature drops, locals scrape tons of ice blocks and snow from nearby Torne River. This year merely 22 tones of snow and ice was used to create the Ice Hotel on 5500 square meters area. Main bearing columns are equipped with steel rods from inside, which help to prevent them form collapse. These columns are created by spraying snow on the steel construction and allowing it to freeze into rock solid mass. Then, ice walls are built around the columns and large blocks of ice are placed inside the rooms, to let the artists to carve on them. The construction works continues for at least one month. Usually the Ice Hotel is completely ready at the end of December, but this year visitors can admire a real "Ice Miracle" from the beginning of the month. The guests can stay in any of 60 rooms, and also visit the ice church, bar, Art Suits and etc. The price for per night stay in world's original and largest Ice Hotel starts from $458! Yes, it's not cheap, but given the fact that it takes one month work of 50 skilled artists, and soon in Spring the hotel will melt back into the Torne River, the price is quite acceptable. Well before the opening of the next Ice Hotel-tourist season, Jukkasjarvi invites everyone to special snow carving lessons.

It is known that the appealing interiors add impact of human labor. For the success of employees and the company's benefit it is necessary to create the most comfortable work conditions. A perfect example of how to turn work into pleasure, are offices of technology companies. In IT companies, employees can play at any time. The is no fixed working hours, no matter where and in what way you work, what you do during working hours; you can come at any time, you can leave office and work at home, play and sit in a cafe even all day long. Of course, to work in a such conditions every day is a great joy. All these contribute to the creative and productive work, help to attract new employees from among the most talented people. Below, some examples of some IT company offices where every employee will dream to work. There is a really Russian spirit in the Google's Moscow Office... Designers used well-known Russian folk tales, cartoons and films to create an interior design. You can start the morning in the dining room "Samobranka" (magic tablecloth that serves meals when told so) and taste the Russian blintz or sit in "Hut on chicken legs". Here you can negotiate on "12 chairs", in "Snake Gorynych" (firedrake), or at "Frog-Princess ". Here you can sit under green oak or in the small library "Lukomorie" (curved seashore) on the soft sofa and read book with a cup of hot coffee. In other words- choose your own fairy tale! There is slightly different approach in the Milan's Google office interior design; everything is made perfectly, but without any hint to luxury. Designers from AMA (Albera Monti & Associati) managed to convey the philosophy of Google and at the same time save national features. AMA designers main focus was to provide good natural lighting and a wonderful view from the windows. Like most IT companies, Google's office in Milan includes restaurant, game room, gymnasium, massage room, showers, and much more! In short, there are all conditions for turning the workplace into something more than an ordinary one. Our next example is Yandex Office. Here is the whole list of the attributes for comfortable "living" at work as well. All the prime work conditions are available here, but without sofas... This is done for only one purpose; to make employees go home to sleep. There are many green plants in the office, which watering is provided by automatic irrigation and drainage systems. There are many grass imitations on the walls, where natural plants could not reach. Architects of this office even gave fabulous names for rooms. For example on the seventh floor all rooms for negotiation begins at 7- the Seven Dwarfs, the Seventh Heaven, the Forty-Second Cousin (in Russian this phrase starts with seven). ABBYY employs both programmers and linguists. The room, where staff works with Asian countries, is always Asian way holiday decorated. There is shortage of working places by the window and some employees have to stick artificial windows on the walls. In general, there are many places where people can work, communicate, and also relax as long as they want. It seems, that the only missing things are house slippers, but it turned out that they have it too! The office of the Pionen White Mountain, where the database of quarrelsome WikiLeaks is stored, is located in a former bomb shelter. This "shelter" is in Stockholm, at a depth of 30 meters underground, in a solid granite monolith. The bunker was built during the Cold War and was a central part of the defense system of Stockholm. For the needs of the office it was necessary to blow up and output 4,000 additional cubic meters of rock. The interior design was developed by the architectural bureau Albert France-Lanorda and as basis was taken the idea from one of the Bond films - "Moonraker" (1979). Therefore, a lot indeed strongly reminds asylum of madman billionaire Hugo Drax. The walls of the bunker are covered with a lot of plants, there's even an artificial waterfall. The office has a great aquarium with 2600 liters capacity and a huge conference hall, "descended" from the screen of the Star Wars movies.

As reported by Hurriyetdailynews on December 8 in Istanbul opened an exhibition of photos of more than 100 buildings built by Armenian architects living and creating in Istanbul in XIX and in the beginning of XX century. The exhibition is called "Armenian architects of Istanbul in the Era of Westernization" and will continue until January 2. Istanbul is deservedly considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with beautiful monuments of architecture built since the Byzantine Empire. As noted by the Turkish daily Radical, Istanbul never would have been so beautiful without architects of the Armenian origin. Especially remarkable mark was left by famous Balyan family architects, who designed and built the most beautiful palaces, mosques and barracks for more than 100 years. To slightly understand the Balyan's contribution to the whole Istanbul architecture, here are only some photos of perfect Palaces. Also we want to drive our gratitude to the curator of the exhibition, Hasan Kuruyazici, who carried out a 15-year study about the works of Armenian architects in Istanbul and the photography took one year.