Singapore's latest development will finally blossom later this month, with an imposing canopy of artificial trees up to 50 meters high towering over a vast urban oasis, reported The CNN. The colossal solar-powered supertrees are found in the Bay South garden, which opens to the public on June 29. It is part of a 250-acre landscaping project -- Gardens by the Bay -- that is an initiative from Singapore's National Parks Board that will see the cultivation of flora and fauna from foreign lands. The man-made mechanical forest consists of 18 supertrees that act as vertical gardens, generating solar power, acting as air venting ducts for nearby conservatories, and collecting rainwater. To generate electricity, 11 of the supertrees are fitted with solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into energy, which provides lighting and aids water technology within the conservatories below. Varying in height between 25 and 50 meters, each supertree features tropical flowers and various ferns climbing across its steel framework. The large canopies also operate as temperature moderators, absorbing and dispersing heat, as well as providing shelter from the hot temperatures of Singapore's climate to visitors walking beneath. Bridges dubbed "skywalks" have been erected connecting several of the higher 50-meter supertrees, letting visitors stroll between them and view the gardens from dizzying heights. The horticultural heaven also boasts two green conservatories in close proximity -- the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome -- climate-controlled biomes inspired by the shape of an orchid flower, which project organizers hope will become the park's main attractions. The biomes are the equivalent size of four football fields and will become the new home for 220 thousand plants from almost every continent. Designed by Grant Associates, the project is part of a redevelopment scheme to create a new downtown district in the Marina Bay area, on Singapore's south side. Project organizers hope the completed Gardens by the Bay will become an eco-tourist destination showcasing sustainable practices and plants from across the globe. Launched seven years ago by Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the horticultural oasis will be a contrast to the country's extremely dense urban environment, forming part of the government's overall strategy to transform Singapore into a "city in a garden."

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.

According to Turkishnews, a new eco-friendly region plans to be built in Istanbul. A new project was named "The Yenisehir", which in Turkish means "The new city". The eco-region design was made by reputed American architect Sidney Rasekh, a founder of Urban Green Global architectural company.40 thousand hectares of land near the northern coast of Black Sea has been allocated under the construction. The new region basic concept is ecology. "The Yenisehir" should be an eco-friendly: here will be taken into account and minimized the adverse effects of such environmental factors as an unwise energy, water and food expenditure, air pollution by carbon dioxide and methane and water pollution. According to preliminary information, "The Yenisehir" will include 10 villages with population about 1 million. The eco-city will house an Olympic Village with 700 hectares total area, 2 universities and a medical center, a new airport, with 3.5 thousand hectares total area, which will reduce the workload of the Ataturk Airport.

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.

The outlines of a massive solar thermal power plant-the largest ever-are starting to appear in the wilderness outside of Las Vegas. The US$ 2.2 billion project, which is being built by NRG Energy, Google, Oakland, California-based BrightSource and Bechtel, the engineering and construction contractor for the project, stretches over 14.5 million square meters near Ivanpah in Mojave Desert, California. When it's finished, it will generate 377 megawatts of electricity on sunny days and it will nearly double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the US. The project has been a long time coming. BrightSource first filed an application for the project in the summer of 2007. Approval took three years and official construction started in October 2011. Crews began installing the hundreds of thousands of mirrors in February of this year. Construction was temporarily slowed to accommodate the care and relocation of desert tortoises-a threatened species-found in larger numbers than expected. The project, which will generate electricity by using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to heat up water and drive steam turbines, is now expected to be finished next year in 2013. The Ivanpah solar thermal power plant will generate power the same way as traditional power plants - by creating high temperature steam to turn a turbine. However, instead of using fossil fuels or nuclear power to create the steam, this plant uses the sun's energy. By this way, the plant will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 400 thousand tons annually, which is equivalent of taking more than 70 thousand cars off the road. Besides this, in order to conserve scarce water resources, the plant employs an air-cooling system to convert the steam back into water in a closed-loop cycle. By using air-cooling, the new technology uses more than 90 percent less water than older technology parabolic through plants with wet cooling. Even as the project nears completion, the future of solar thermal power plants is in doubt. That's in large part because prices for solar panels-which convert sunlight to electricity directly-have dropped quickly in the last few years, causing at least one company to abandon plans to build solar thermal plants in favor of making ones that use solar panels. At least, solar thermal has one great strength compared to many other types of solar power: the heat it produces is easy to store, so electricity can be generated even after the sun goes down, and power can be dispatched to the grid whenever it's most needed. But the picture may change, as according to The CNNMoney, the US Department of Commerce last month announced it would impose punitive tariffs as high as 250 percent on panels imported from China after finding that Chinese companies have been "dumping" them at prices below production costs. As we reported earlier, on May 2011 took place ground breaking ceremony of the world's largest Blythe Solar power plant. Once construction is completed, the site will feature four solar thermal power plants with a total generating capacity of thousand megawatts of electricity. Latest development for Blythe Solar is very much unfavorable. As reported the Forbes, developer companies of the project Solar Trust of America and the Solar Millennium Group filed for bankruptcy, the former in USA and the latter in Germany.