The world's largest hotel is being planned for Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a remarkable structure that will rise out of the desert and apparently contain 10,000 rooms for worshippers. The hotel will be part of a mixed-use development at Abraj Kudai, a US$ 3.5 billion project intended to look like a desert fortress that encompasses a ring of towers standing on top of a podium. It is due to be completed in 2017 and is being situated in the Manafia area of Mecca's central zone, just 2.2 kilometers south of the Masjid al-Haram (holy mosque). DesignMENA reported that the hotel will have 10,000 rooms in 12 separate towers, which are 44 stores high that will also include 70 restaurants, rooftop helipads, royal floors and a full size convention center. Two of the towers will offer five-star facilities, according to the hotel's architects Dar Al-Handasah. The other ten will provide four-star accommodation. The interiors are expected to be in keeping with the opulent style found elsewhere in the region. The site, which will also include residential facilities, a shopping mall and plenty of car parking for those visiting the mosque and black Kaaba, has an approximate total site area of 60,000 square meters and a total built-up area of 1.4 million square meters. The world's largest hotels up until now have been in Las Vegas. The Venetian and The Palazzo, which operate as a single hotel, offer 7117 rooms. The MGM Grand in Las Vegas is close behind in terms of number of room keys, with 6,852 rooms available.

At first 15 floors in 6 days, then 30 floors in 15 days, now 57 floors in 19 days... Chinese company "Broad Sustainable Building" again hits a record. BSB Architect Xian Min Zhang has released a time-lapse video of the construction of the company's latest building: a 57-floor, 80 thousand square meters skyscraper, fully built with energy-efficient, factory-produced, Lego-like blocks. He claims BSB is now building its prefabricated skyscrapers at a record three floors per day. The new prefabricated tower, which named "J57", has 19 atriums of 10 meters' height each, 800 apartments and office space for 4,000 people. The use of company's modular construction technique, which won a CTBUH Innovation Award in 2013, reduced the use of concrete by 15,000 trucks, which has nearly eliminated all the dust that would normally be released during conventional construction, an important advantage in pollution-ridden China. Besides this, the air inside the building is 99.9 percent pure, thanks to the tight construction and built-in air conditioning system. The J57 building has quadruple-pane glass and is so energy efficient that it will save more than 10,000 metric tons of CO2 emission compared to a conventionally constructed building of the same size and use. The first attempt to build such buildings company made in 2010, when built its first prefabricated tower. The 15-story Ark Hotel was built in record 6 days . After two years, company built 30-story prefabricated hotel just in 15 days. Then in 2013 the founder of parent company Broad Group Chairman Zhang Yue announced about its ambitious project. The company planned to build world's tallest tower - 838 meter high "Sky City". According to the company, construction of this tower began on June 20, 2013 and would be completed by April 2014. But the project has been halted, apparently for political reasons. This Mini Sky city, while proving that Zhang's techniques work-and quite impressively so-was itself halted at 20 stories and then cut in height from 97 stories to 57; the company states that this was due to its location near an airport.

China currently boasts the world's largest building, could soon be home to the world's tallest pair of towers, and according to Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), we will soon be able to add an airport passenger terminal to the list. The firm has unveiled plans for its Beijing New Airport Terminal Building, which it says will be the world's largest. The project is collaboration between ZHA and airport architecture firm ADP Ingenierie, and is being carried out under the leadership of the Beijing New Airport Headquarters (BNAH). Building will initially accommodate 45 million passengers per year and "will be adaptable and sustainable, operating in many different configurations dependent on varying aircraft and passenger traffic throughout each day," states ZHA. Beyond its predicted capacity of 45 million passengers per year, details on the new terminal building are scant. Gizmag reports that the terminal will "measure 700,000 square meters, and that the entire airport will be completed in 2018, for a total budget of roughly US$13.8 billion," but notes that ZHA is yet to confirm this. The mammoth new star-shaped terminal will include "direct links to local and national rail services including the Gaotie high speed rail," and is planned as "a key hub within Beijing's growing transport network and a catalyst for the region's economic development, including the city of Tianjin and Hebei Province". The New Beijing Terminal Building is being developed so as to alleviate pressure on Beijing's existing Capital Airport. Completed in 2008, the Foster + Partners-designed airport is already one of the largest in the world, but has been operating beyond its capacity.