Foster + Partners has begun construction on a supertall skyscraper in Toronto's business district, which is set to become the country's tallest building at 306 meters, reported The Dezeen. It will be Canada's tallest inhabitable building and it's second-tallest man-made structure after the CN Tower, a 553-metre communications and observation tower. At 85 stories and over 300 meters in height, the building will be classified as a supertall skyscraper. The rectilinear design by British firm Foster + Partners and Ontario-based Core Architects will feature an expressed structure, with vertical, horizontal and diagonal elements covered in "champagne bronze" colored cladding. The skyscraper will be broken up into a series of blocks by regularly spaced bands that cut into the structure, correlating to the placement of the building's mechanical floors. The One's upper floors will be dedicated to living space, providing approximately 560 apartments. This will include several duplex penthouses offering inhabitants impressive views out to Lake Ontario and beyond. The eight lowest levels will be occupied by shops, restaurants and cafes linking with the city's Yorkville neighborhood. To keep the building's base exclusively for commercial use, all of the homes will be accessed via a sky lobby above the shopping podium. Here there will be communal spa and fitness facilities, as well as an outdoor terrace, library, and formal entertainment rooms.

Enormous “Cacti” will soon pop up in the heart of Copenhagen. Architecture firm BIG has unveiled plans to build an eye-catching pair of buildings with a spiny appearance in the city’s Vesterbro district. Created in collaboration with Danish practice Dorte Mandrup Architects, the aptly named Cactus Towers are high-rise residential buildings that will be built next to a new sustainably minded IKEA store. Located next to the waterfront area of Kalvebod Brygge, the 74,000 square meter site will comprise a new IKEA store, budget hotel, and green space in addition to the two planned Cactus Towers. The pair of buildings gets its name from the striking spiky-looking facade created by rotated floor plates. The corners of those floor plates create overhangs that provide shade. The buildings will rise to 60 and 80 meters tall and feature 500 “youth rooms.” The new IKEA next door to the towers will not have any parking on cars and will encourage shoppers to take away their smaller purchases on bicycle. The 1,250-room hotel also on site will be spread across two volumes and is expected to be the largest hotel in the Nordic region. The project is set to open in 2019.

North Korea's famous pyramid-shaped hotel Ryugyong has been renovated, despite never having welcomed a single guest, reported The Daily Mail. The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel - the world's tallest unoccupied building - in the capital Pyongyang has been spruced up and awarded two new walkways. The renovations may be a sign that Dictator Kim Jong-Un could be about to finish the project started by his grandfather in 1987, branded 'the Hotel of Doom'. From a distance, the glassy, greenish-blue Ryugyong looks like it's ready for business. But it is believed to be far from complete inside and possibly even structurally unsound. Work on the building started in 1987 while Kim's grandfather Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder and 'eternal president,' was still alive. It was supposed to open in 1989 and would have been the world's tallest hotel - surpassing another in Singapore that was built by a South Korean company. But a severe economic crash and famines in the 1990s left North Korea in no position to pump funds into the hotel's construction, and it stayed little more than an embarrassing concrete shell for well over a decade before Egypt's Orascom Group - which was also key in establishing the North's cellphone system - helped pay for work to complete the building's shiny exterior in 2011.

AMBS Architects was commissioned with a highly confidential project - due to security reasons until recently - in Basra, Iraq. Home to a bulk of Iraq's oil reserves, the province is becoming one of the fastest-growing business centers in the world (and most precious per square meter). The new downtown master plan was assigned by the Basra governorate with an aim of maximizing the city's capacity by 2025. Avoiding urban sprawl was the top priority in order to protect the environment, thus posing the preference to build vertically, rather than outwards. The scheme for the downtown area will feature a one of a kind landmark to match its importance called The Bride tower. The brief developed into four conjoined towers creating a more logical and stable structure with multiple accesses and escape routes via horizontal and vertical circulations. Tower 1, located on the south side, is the tallest, and is shaded by a glazed canopy known as 'the veil'. The towers are connected at many levels creating "sky gardens" and "sky squares". The Bride will be the first vertical city in the world. It will also be the tallest structure there is and will break new ground in all disciplines of engineering: from structures to vertical transportation and services. It will keep a constant typical section from top to bottom, which gives maximum space efficiency and repetition, reducing the costs. Furthermore, it's designed to be a "round the clock" city, with offices, hotels, whole neighborhoods, commercial centers, sky-squares, parks, gardens and its own rail network. The design responds to the external environment strategically positioning the structures in a way that they can shade one another. The south facade of tower 1 will be almost completely cloaked by a canopy that extends over 600 thousand square meters, covering low-rise buildings, public areas and the first floors of the high-rise. Apart from shading and cooling for the south facade of tower 1, the "veil" will integrate hybrid solar cooling PVT panels (a photovoltaic-thermal combined system). The water heated within these panels will be used to increase the performance of the photovoltaics, and which will subsequently be fed to absorption chillers. the heat provided to the generator will drive a cycle that produces chilled water for cooling. The city of Basra and its surrounding lands have been historically fertile and capable of producing abundant vegetation and agricultural crops. This reputation earned it the name "the bride of the gulf" by local people. The "bride tower" project takes its name to reference this saying and aims to convey the idea at many levels.

In Melbourne, Australia, a new skyscraper will mimic the curves of a famous pop star Beyonce. Her moves have inspired fans at architecture firm Elenberg Fraser to design a 226-meter-high skyscraper that resembles her curvtastic form. Specifically, the building will be homage to the music video for Beyonce's 2013 hit "Ghost." The actual name of the building is the Premiere Tower, located at 134 Spencer Street in downtown Melbourne, which is the second most populated city in Australia after Sydney. Rather than flat or angular exterior walls, the new skyscraper will be composed of a series of waves, bulges, and curves. The designers say this makes the building highly efficient, while also serving as an artistic nod to the fabric-wrapped dancers in Bey's video. The curves really aren't just for show. The building's design it intended to respond to climate, wind changes, and the particular limitations of the site, according to the architecture firm. "This project is the culmination of our significant research," said the firm in a statement. "The complex form - a vertical cantilever - is actually the most effective way to redistribute the building's mass, giving the best results in terms of structural dispersion, frequency oscillation and wind requirements." The project has been financed by the Fragrance Group, a real estate company owned by Singaporean billionaire Koh Wee Meng Premiere. Tower will raise 68 stories over the west end of the city's business district. Inside, there will be 660 residential apartments and a 160-room hotel. Because the tower is tall and thin, most units on any upper floor will have a spectacular view of the cityscape below. In renderings of the interior, we can see that the undulating curves of the building have been brought inside, with ceilings and walls that hint at the building's overall shape.