Designed to house up to half a million people, China's largest new "satellite city" project, the city Kilamba in Africa remains a ghost town due to high living costs and failed access to bank credit, reported The CNN. Perched in an isolated spot some 30 kilometers outside Angola's capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units. Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of US$ 3.5 billion. Spanning 5000 hectares, the development is the largest of several new "satellite cities" being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola, and it is believed to be one of the largest new-build projects on the continent. However, after sales start revealed, that two-thirds of Angolans cannot afford Kilamba's apartments which are advertised online as being between US$ 120and US$ 200 thousand. The jewel in Angola's post-war reconstruction crown, Kilamba is the star of glossy government promotional videos which show smiling families enjoying a new style of living away from the dust and confusion of central Luanda where millions live in sprawling slums. But the people in these films are only actors, and despite all the hype, nearly a year since the first batch of 2800 apartments went on sale, only 220 have been sold. Apartments at Kilamba are being advertised online costing between US$ 120 and US$ 200 thousand - well out of reach of the estimated two-thirds of Angolans who live on less than US$ 2 a day. However, Paulo Cascao, general Manager at Delta Imobiliaria, the real estate agency handling the sales, told the BBC that the problem was not the price, but difficulty in accessing bank credit. Now the authorities are planning rent houses for long term, but BBC experts believe that it will not help to improve the situation as the majority of Angolan citizens are too poor and the rich part of the population is interested only in luxury accommodation.

In 2008, a construction team building a new expressway linking Shenmu county and Yulin city, both in Shaanxi province, found the remains of an ancient wall buried in the ground. The ruins were only 30 centimeters high. Archaeologists later learned that the wall belonged to a section of the Great Wall of China, and they discovered more ruins. To protect the new discovery, the local government decided to dig a tunnel under the walls for the new expressway to pass. Now China's cultural protection authority will end the trouble to change the construction plan at the last minute since some of the Great Wall has been found - the authority has figured out the length and location of all of the walls. Last week, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage published its latest survey result, which said the Great Wall measures 21,196.18 kilometers, almost 2.4 times the widely believed estimation of 8,851.8 km, reported The China Daily. The survey was performed jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation. "The previous estimation particularly refers to Great Walls built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), but this new measure includes Great Walls built in all dynasties," said Yan Jianmin, office director of the-China Great Wall Society, an NGO founded by specialists and scholars to protect the Great Wall of China. Archaeologists and mapping experts conducted field surveys in 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions including Heilongjiang, Hebei, Beijing, Shaanxi and Xinjiang, and found 43,721 sites related to the Great Wall. Using historical records, artifacts and information from locals, Li and his colleagues unveiled small parts of the Great Wall that had long been forgotten by people. The survey is only the first step in a larger project to protect the Great Wall. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched a protection project in 2006, and planned on a long-term maintenance map to be completed before the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period. The Great Wall was first built during the reign of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) to keep out foreign invaders. The municipal government of Jiayuguan in northwest China's Gansu province on November 18, 2011 kicked off a repair and construction project focused on the western end of China's Great Wall, reported Xinhua.

As reported The Morning Whistle, Changsha, China's Hunan province will be home to world's tallest building, which will be built in just 7 months, if a report in local newspaper Sanxiangdushibao is to be believed. According to unconfirmed sources, the building, known as Yuanwang Mansion, will stand at 838 meters in height and have 220 floors, 50 floors more than the world’s current tallest building, Burj Khalifa. It is designed to contain residential units, hotels, schools, a hospital and offices buildings. The local Wangcheng district government has reached an agreement with Yuanda Kejian Technology Ltd. to start the building project with a total investment of at least US$ 600 million. The newspaper reported that the building can be a home for 30,400 people and will have 16 panoramic and 31 super high speed elevators capable of carrying 30 thousand people per hour to every floor. The company will be able to complete the structure so quickly because it will have a pure steel structure, and all the material will be fully prefabricated before construction. Can China set a new record in Hunan province, which housed all recently built prefab buildings? China's new propose is unbelievable, as world's current tallest building Burj Khalifa required six years to build. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a conglomerate led by Kingdom Holding Corporation is in the advanced design stage to build the one-kilometer-tall Kingdom Tower, which is expected to be finished in 2017. 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 earthquake - and even boasts energy-efficient building techniques n 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. . P.S. Information source - Morning Whistle (China Business Watch) is the English-language business news, analysis and opinion aggregation service of 21st Century Media Group, China's leading financial media group.

Construction has begun on the Foster + Partners-designed Art Museum in Datong's New City, in China. The distinctive 32 thousand square meters museum will be largely submerged into the ground, with the four large interconnected steel pyramids which form its roof appearing to erupt through the surface of the surrounding plaza. The dramatic, unusual structure also assists with the museum's passive energy savings, as skylights placed within the north and north-west facing pyramids allow for maximum natural light while minimizing the impact of solar heat. Since the roof dominates the Datong Art Museum, comprising 70 percent of the building's exposed surface area, Foster + Partners added double insulation to the panels of the roof. This measure further reduces energy consumption while maintaining the precise climate control required within an art museum. The relatively narrow skylights which follow the roof line of each of the four interconnected pyramids allow for maximum natural light for appreciation of the art work, as well as serving as a "beacon" for the museum, illuminating the night sky. Forming only 10 percent of the overall structure, maintenance requirements will be minimal. The earth-toned Corten steel panels which encase the visible exterior elements of the museum will naturally weather over time, enhancing the impression that the museum has somehow erupted from the cultural plaza. The smooth, sloping entrance to the museum will lead visitors in the Grand Gallery. Separate areas, including a children's gallery, group entrance lobby, cafe, restaurant are arranged within sunken court yards, again provided with focused natural light. The interior can be additionally subdivided to allow for event and exhibition appropriate usage of the space. Scheduled to open next year, the Datong Art Museum will be one of four new buildings constructed in Datong's Cultural Plaza. When complete, Datong's new quarter will be the centre of the city's cultural life, with the new museum as its 'urban room' - a dynamic space, open to everyone to meet and enjoy its different displays and activities.

Changzhou, China will soon have a massive new cultural center complete with an arts museum, a science and technology museum and a library, reported The Inhabitat. The complex will be designed by Hamburg-based GMP Architekten who has made natural daylight a vital design strategy. Skylights, atria, transparent facades and bright white surfaces will encourage light to reach the inner depths of the large facility. Generous landscaping, which includes a waterway right through the center of the Changzhou Culture Center will make this a desirable meeting place and a prominent landmark for the city. GMP Architekten recently won first prize in the international competition to build the culture center in the newly created Changzhou city center. The 350,000 sq meter project will be six times larger than the Louvre in Paris and will include a number of hubs such as an arts museum, a science and technology museum and a library. The center will also provide for service facilities that support the center for culture in the Xinbei district of the city. The basement will provide for an underground parking garage and the lower levels will be filled with retail shops and restaurants. The complex's form is created from 6 modular buildings with the same cantilevered and arced volume. Placed together, these modules create a much larger volume with a flat roof and large open pavilions in the middle. From the outside, each module looks the same, but varies significantly on the inside with different architectural functions to cater to the specific programs within. The facades are clad in staggered grey slate and transparent glass to move light through and around the space, while skylights and atria help pull light down into the modules. Finally generous landscaping will work to make the center a desirable meeting place and a water course that cuts diagonally through the site will be a prominent feature. Like a natural canyon, the waterway is a landscaping element, helps create a microclimate and pulls light into the lower levels.