As if having the tallest and most expensive skyscraper in the world wasn’t enough, Dubai has shown its decadence once again by building an ice lounge right in the middle of the desert. The Chillout Café looks as if it were lifted right out of Sweden or Quebec, with couches, chandeliers, and even glasses made from ice. The carved-ice café hits about 21 degrees Fahrenheit, and it offers designer winter gear for its patrons to keep warm while the city blazes at 95° F outside.

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Post tags: burj khalifa, Chillout Cafe, eco design, green design, ice cafe Dubai, ice hotel, Sharaf Group, sustainable design

You’d think that the world’s tallest building – a structure that requires amazingly complex engineering and technology to reach its heights – would have an equally impressive sewage system. Unfortunately, that’s not the case because it isn’t hooked up to a municipal wastewater treatment system – so when you poop in the Burj Khalifa, that waste is actually trucked out of the city. Trucked out of the city! We’re frankly flabbergasted by the inefficiency of such a system. One of the world’s most advanced buildings relies on an arcane method to transport wastewater to a treatment facility outside of town. So remember, if you happen to visit and use the Burj Khalifa’s restroom, some unfortunate person has to collect your poop and drive it out of Dubai.

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Post tags: Architecture, burj khalifa, Burj Khalifa Tower, burj khalifa waste, dubai, epic fail, poop, SOM, trucking waste, Waste, wastewater, wastewater system, wastewater treatemen, world's tallest building

Earlier this year, Chinese Company Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), announced plans to build the world’s tallest skyscraper in an unbelievable 90 days. Now the build time for the 838-meter-tall tower has been pushed back to more reasonable (if still incredibly speedy) 210 days. Sky City is set to shatter the current record for loftiest building held by the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa in downtown Dubai.

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Post tags: Broad Sustainable Building, BSB, burj khalifa, changsha, china, dubai, Gensler, hunan, shanghai tower, sky city, skyskcraper, tower

Even since the current world’s tallest builing – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – was completed, there has been a constant battle to build the world’s next tallest building. The current record holder stands tall at 828 meters and took five years to build, but a Chinese company called Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) aims to smash that record by building the 838 meter eco-friendly Sky City tower, in Changsa, China in a mere 90 days – and they’re planning to use prefab building techniques to construct the skyscraper so quickly!

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Post tags: Broad Sustainable Building, BSB, BSB Sky City, burj dubai, burj khalifa, Changsa, china, china skyscraper, green skyscraper, green tower, Hunan Province, new world's tallest building, prefab skyscraper, prefab tower, sky city, Sky City skyscraper, Sky City tower, Tallest Building in the World, world's fastest construction, world's tallest building

Tokyo Skytree photo from Shutterstock

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Post tags: burj khalifa, Canton Tower, CN Tower, communication twoer, eco design, Fukishima Nuclear Disaster, green design, second tallest manmande structure, Sumida River, sustainable design, Tokyo, Tokyo Sky Tree, tokyo skytree, World's tallest communication tower

One might think that emirs of Dubai would learn from their past mistakes after Dubai’s artificial ‘The World’ archipelago surrendered its sands to the sea, but sinking islands and rising tides have yet to flag the Arab emirate’s ambitions of world building. Aerial photographs recently revealed that Dubai has been hard at work creating a new island – one shaped exactly like Dubai’s city center, but 1/3 the size. That’s not all – closer inspection of the photos shows that a smaller island shaped like Dubai is located off the coast of that island, and an even smaller Dubai-shaped island lies off the coast of that one!

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Post tags: "april fools", aerial photos reveal new dubai islands, Architecture, artificial island, burj khalifa, dubai, dubai island, Dubaisland, global warming, man-made island, satellite photos reveal new dubai islands, sinking islands, uae, united arab emirates

Read the rest of Mission Impossible Burj Khalifa Tower Park: World’s Tallest Building Makes Its Movie Debut

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Read the rest of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Will Design Tallest Building in the World, Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia

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It’s been just three months since the Burj Khalifa took the title of “world’s tallest building”, and already the shifting sands of Dubai have spawned a successor! A paragon of modern architecture, the iconic ICARUS tower is currently soaring towards the sky to become the next “World’s Tallest Building”. Designed by Daedalus Architects, the timeless skyscraper blends seamlessly into its surrounding environment and harnesses a nearly inexhaustible resource to provide for 100% of it’s energy needs: human labor.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", april fool's day, burj khalifa, dubious dubai, Green Building, green design, humor, joke, sustainable design, the fountainhead

Read the rest of Miapolis LEED Eco-City Could Be Next World’s Tallest Building

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Post tags: "leed", burj khalifa, carbon sequestration, eco design, Green Building, green design, green roof, kobi karp, leed certification, Miami, miapolis, miapolis miami, Sustainable Building, watson island