The builder of The Shard skyscraper in London will be the project manager for the planned US$ 1.2 billion, 1000 meters-tall Kingdom Tower skyscraper in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Mace will manage the development in a joint venture with construction consultant EC Harris, part of Dutch group Arcadis, and the tower will be built by Saudi construction firm Bin Laden Group. The project was unveiled by American firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. The tower's height is planned at almost three times the height of the Shard (at 310 meters), although by precisely how much is a secret. The structure will take over from Dubai's 828-metre Burj Khalifa as the world's tallest skyscraper. Plans were unveiled 18 months ago by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal as the centerpiece to the Kingdom City development in Jeddah, a major Red Sea port. With a total construction area of more than 500 thousand square meters, the Kingdom tower will include a five-star hotel, luxury flats, office space and the world's highest observatory, with breathtaking views of the Red Sea and the al-Sawarat mountains to the east. The Saudi Bin Laden group will begin construction later this year and the project should be completed in winter 2018. The proposals for the 1050 meters tall Azerbaijan Tower, for the 838-meter Sky City in Changsha , and Karachi Tower have also claimed the distinction of the world's next tallest building.

Construction began on world's tallest modular building, a 32-storey residential tower in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development by Manhattan-based firm SHoP Architects. Nearly 60 percent of the B2 tower will be prefabricated off-site. This means the complex will produce 70-90 percent less waste and will reduce energy consumption by 67 percent during the building phase. Controversy has swirled around this strategy, as it will cut union worker wages from US$ 85 an hour for on-site construction to only US$ 35 an hour in a factory setting. The development also drastically cuts the number of workers needed, leaving only 125 lucky laborers on the job. The flipside to this is that the overall cost and energy will be also being cut. B2 is the first of three new residential towers planned around the Barclays Center, the 19,000-seat indoor sports and music arena that opened this September. Both were designed by Manhattan-based firm SHoP Architects as part of the controversial Atlantic Yards development. The three buildings will provide around 1500 residential units in total, half of which will be earmarked as affordable housing. B2's 363 apartments are expected to be available for occupancy in summer 2014. While developers and city officials hail B2 as the world's tallest modular building, construction is also set to begin on a modular tower in Changsha, China, which at 838 meters, or 220 story's, would be the tallest building in the world - and construction firm Broad Sustainable Building says the tower, called Sky City, will go up in just 90 days. 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 magnitude earthquake - and even boasts energy-efficient building techniques. In 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.

Apparently Phoenix isn't well-known enough, because developers want to put it on the map with a giant pin-shaped observation tower. Designed by BIG, the Pin is a 128 meters tall tower topped with a giant ball and spiraling exhibition and recreation space. Likely visible from space, the pin will let aliens and astronauts know where Phoenix is and visitors can enjoy unparalleled 360dg views from its heights. Lit up with LED lights at night, BIG plans for the Phoenix Observation Tower to serve as a working model of sustainable energy practices and will incorporate a blend of solar and other technologies. The Pin Phoenix Observation Tower is being developed by boutique real estate company Novawest and designed by Denmark-based BIG. Unlike many other big cities, Phoenix does not have an observation tower to draw visitors into its downtown. The pin will be located in the heart of the museums, convention center and the sports arenas. Rising 128 meters tall in the air, the Pin is composed of a concrete core topped with a spiral sphere. BIG's design was inspired by the Guggenheim museum and is like a core sample removed from the building and placed on top of a tower. Visitors will enter the facility through the Base, which will serve as a public plaza offering shade, water features and a small amount of retail together with a subterranean queuing area. An elevator in the core will take the visitors up to the top of the sphere and then they walk down at their own pace. Inside the sphere, visitors can enjoy dynamic viewing and observation space, a terrace bar and cafe, a high-end restaurant, event space for catered events, a viewing gallery for special art and cultural exhibits and an evening lounge and nightclub. The Pin is definitely a distinctive landmark and will certainly place the city on the map. One can imagine though the analogies you can make regarding its shape - a golf ball on a tee, a giant mascara wand, or a huge map pin. Sustainability is said to be a large part of the design and will include energy efficient practices, LED lighting, and solar technologies.

Mercury City, the tower Russian retail billionaire Igor Kesaev is building in Moscow's new financial district, overtook the Shard in London as Europe's tallest skyscraper, reported Bloomberg. The tower, which construction began in 2006, reached its full height of 339 meters, 29 meters more than the Shard, Kesaev's Mercury Development announced, citing Hamburg-based researcher Emporis. The 75-story skyscraper, designed by U.S. architect Frank Williams, who died in 2010, and Russia's Mikhail Posokhin, is due to be completed in the first quarter next year. Investment in the project totaled US$1 billion. The tower has about 90 thousand square meters of office space and 20 thousand square meters of apartments, according to the developer's website. The starting price for apartments in Mercury City is US $11.1 thousand for a square meter. The rental price should be at a market level of about US$800 - US$900 per square meter a year, but on this stage of construction tenants expect it to be about US$700. The title of "Europe's tallest building" belonged to London for all of a few months as the Russian capital moves onwards and upwards. But "Mercury city" will not carry the title of "the Europe's tallest building" for a long time, as the under-construction Federation Tower is in the process of being built right next to Mercury City and, upon its completion next year, will stand at a staggering 506 meter.

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.