A new London skyscraper 20 Fenchurch Street dubbed the "Walkie-Talkie" has been blamed for reflecting light which melted parts of a car parked on a nearby street. Martin Lindsay parked his Jaguar on East cheap, in the City of London. When he returned about two hours later, he found parts of his car - including the wing mirror and badge - had melted. Mr Lindsay said he "could not believe" the damage. The developers have apologized and paid for repairs. The wing mirror, panels and Jaguar badge had all melted, Mr Lindsay said. "You can't believe something like this would happen," he added. "They've got to do something about it. It could be dangerous. Imagine if the sun reflected on the wrong part of the body. Mr Lindsay said the developers had apologized and agreed to sort out the US$ 1470 repair costs. In a joint statement, developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf said: "We are aware of concerns regarding the light reflecting from 20 Fenchurch Street and are looking into the matter." As a precautionary measure, the City of London has agreed to suspend three parking bays in the area which may be affected while we investigate the situation further." Other owners whose vehicles have been damaged by the unusual phenomenon, believed to be caused by the building's concave design, have also come forward. Eddie Cannon, a heating and air conditioning engineer, said his Vauxhall Vevaro suffered a similar fate the day before. He said: 'The van looks a total mess - every bit of plastic on the left hand side and everything on the dashboard has melted, including a bottle of Lucozade that looks like it has been baked.'

After five long years, the stunning US$ 294 million Library of Birmingham officially opened its doors to the public on September 3, 2013. Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo and engineering consultancy firm Buro Happold, Britain's largest public library replaces Birmingham's Central Library with what is possibly the world's most luxurious-looking structure that features a sunken amphitheater, "secret" rooftop gardens, and a beautiful filigree veil of interlocking metal rings over a gold and silver glass skin. Located in the heart of the city, the Library of Birmingham's eye-catching metal lattice was designed in reference to Birmingham's "interlocking stories of industrial heritage, jewelry, people and knowledge." The new modernized design is a sharp contrast with its predecessor's Brutalist concrete form, swapping the old inverted ziggurat design with four staggered rectangular volumes held within a shimmering glass facade. Inside are ten floors: three of the main reading levels spiral out from a open rotunda, a focal point of the building; one floor is underground; the tenth is a rooftop rotunda housing the Shakespeare Memorial Room, designed in 1882. A modern reincarnation of its predecessor the Central Library, the 35 thousand square meter Library of Birmingham commands a 20% larger footprint but with a 50% less demand for energy. As a BREEAM 'Excellent' rated building, the library incorporates grey water systems and ground source heat pumps. Two outdoor garden terraces also attract biodiversity and help with carbon sequestration. The state-of-the-art library will be integrated with the existing Birmingham REP Theatre, and will share many new facilities, including a 300 seat auditorium, meeting and conference rooms, as well as a cafe and restaurant. Envisioned as the "social heart" of Birmingham, the new library will also offer 400 thousand new books to an expected crowd of 3.5 million visitors a year.

Saudi Arabia will build a new city for 600 thousand people near Makkah. Named Makkah Gate, the residential and administrative city will be developed under a publi-private partnership on the Makkah-Jeddah Highway with 45 districts. Spanning an area of 83 million square meters, the project will include educational institutions, government offices, shopping centers, housing units and a national park. Saudi Arabia is creating several new cities across the kingdom, particularly near the religious cities of Makkah and Medinah, as its population rapidly grows. In June, it was announced a "Pilgrim City" would be built for 200 thousand Muslims who travel to Madinah for Haj and Umrah. The state-of-the-art city would cover 1.6 million square meters and include hotels, furnished apartments, a railway and bus station, government offices and a 400-bed hospital. Construction of a new "mega city" in Rabigh, 150 kilometers north of Jeddah, was due to begin after Ramadan. The Indian developer in charge of the project, Gammon Group, said was worth US$ 2.9 billion and would include an advanced hospital, a petrochemical plant, other industrial areas, schools, mosques and residential villas and cover 20 million square meters of land formerly owned by a former Rabigh governor.

Authorities in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, recently discovered an illegal structure on the roof of a luxury high-rise, China Daily reported. The temple like structure was built on the roof of a 19-story residential building in the city's Nanshan district years ago. A thick metal door with a fingerprint lock separates the 19-th story from the roof. Liu Minxing, deputy head of the law enforcement team of the Shahe sub district office, said that after receiving the report of the illegal structure, his team went to the building several times, but couldn't check out the rooftop structure because they could not gain access to it. The structure's owner refused to open the door and did not meet the team, Liu said. But Liu said that the on roof structure is illegal because the law bans such structures from being built on roofs. Some people in the building said that the owner of the structure often held sacrifices in it, and ash of burned paper fell to the windows of their apartments. The owner of the rooftop structure is the owner of the apartments on the 19 floor, but the residential management office declined to provide any information about the owner, citing privacy concerns. According to a broker with a real estate agency nearby, the price of the building's apartments averages US$ 4,900 per square meter, and the total price of the 19 floor apartments was over US$ 2.5 million. "The owner of the apartments on the 19 floor who built the rooftop structure must be rich or a high-ranking official who had a lot of connections to avoid punishment," the broker said. Liu said his team will continue their investigation into the structure and try to get information about the owner from the residential management office. "If the owner refuses to co-operate with our investigation, we will connect with police, firefighters and the local safety supervision department to form a working group and find a way to open the door," Liu said. The owner could be punished under the law concerned if the structure is deemed to be illegal, Liu said. Earlier a Chinese man is believed to have illegally built an astonishing rooftop palace on the top of a residential building in Beijing . The bizarre two-story edifice - which looks like it has been carved from a mountainside - was constructed by a man known only as Professor Zhang on the top of a suburban apartment block. The professor is said to have spent over six years building his home, after knocking down the penthouse he bought on the 26th floor in 2007.

Here's the skinny on the city's narrowest town house: It just sold for a fat US$ 3.25 million. The historic, three-story home at 75 1/2 Bedford St. - near Sixth Avenue and Houston Street - weighs in at an underfed 92 square meters. A tape measure would only stretch to a cinched-in 2.54 meters wide in the widest rooms - narrow enough for the lankiest Knick to nearly touch two side walls at once. It's where Edna St. Vincent Millay penned her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," in 1923-24. It's Millay who famously coined the phrase, "My candle burns at both ends," suggesting that the poet would have had to orient any such candle longitudinally while working long hours at the address. Other celebrities who have traipsed - carefully - through the gaunt flat are actor Cary Grant, and, before him, John Barrymore. Anthropologist Margaret Meade also lived there, as did popular children's-book writer Ann McGovern, author of "Stone Soup." After moving out, McGovern wrote "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House," a picture book about a man who moves into the thinnest house in the city and then struggles to find a roommate. "For seven years, I lived in the narrowest house in New York. It was only eight and a half feet wide!" McGovern said in a Q-and-A on her Web site, annmcgovern.com. "It's known as the Edna St. Vincent Millay House." "Once I saw a man who was standing in front of the house with arms outstretched," she said. "'Hey,' he said. 'I'm as big as a house,' and he was." Living in her "doll house," as she called it, McGovern said she'd begun noodling about the sorts of characters who could never live in a house so narrow, including an actor who plays Pinocchio - one of the characters in "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House". The latest buyer is George Gund, according to city property records. Although thin, the home's worth has expanded over the years. It was purchased in 1994 for US$ 270 thousnad by architectural preservationist Christopher Dubs. He sold the home in 2000 to Steven Balsamo for a cool US$1.6 million. Then, three years ago, the home sold for US$2.175 million through Corcoran broker Alex Nicholas. That buyer never moved in, instead sinking more money into the place by renovating it top to bottom - the kitchen trapdoor, leading to the basement "recreation room," has been retained. Built in 1873, the three-bedroom home also features floor-to-ceiling French doors opening to a tree-shaded. The inside is more light and airy than its width would suggest thanks to a third-floor skylight and oversized windows. The gussying up allowed it to rent for a healthy US$ 14 thousand a month. It then went back on the market at an overly optimistic US$ 4.3 million. By last year, the asking price had whittled away to US$ 3.495. The thinnest house in the world built between two tower blocks in Warsaw, Poland. The house measures 1.2 meters at its widest point and 71 centimeters at its narrowest. The building has been designed by Jakub Szczesny.