Skyscrapers are heading upwards, becoming greener and the world's wealthy want a piece of the new high life.
Dubai has designs on overtaking Taipei as home to the world's tallest building. When completed next year, the Burj Dubai tower is expected to be more than 800m tall -- dwarfing the 509m Taipei 101 tower. For the moment final height is being kept secret.
"Burj Dubai has scaled over 110 levels and is already in the international spotlight," said Issam Galadari, managing director of developers Emaar International, at the MIPIM real estate conference in Cannes this week.
Burj Dubai will have some 162 floors with retail space, a 160 room hotel and upmarket residential space, highlighting a new trend for expensive homes with a view.
Dubai already has the world's highest hotel in the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab skyscraper, and the Gulf state has also set its sights on becoming home to the world's tallest residential tower.
The Dubai Pentominium tower of luxury units was unveiled in Cannes this week by its developers, Trident International. Each of the120 floors of the 516m building will house a single residential unit with penthouses on the top floors, Trident's Ayush Kukreti said.
A fleet of luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom, will be available to residents as well as yachts, a spa, health clubs, a private theater and business center.
The apartments will cost from US$2.5 million for a lower level unit up to US$10 million for an upper penthouse, according to Kukreti, who said there were potential buyers from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Many of the skyscraper projects showcased at MIPIM combine retail and office space with apartments.
"Younger people are happier today about living in taller buildings as today's towers are much better designed and maintained than they were in the past," said Sally Warren, at international architecture practice Chapman Taylor LLP.
Many of the landmarks to go up over the next few years will become the homes, or second homes, of the rich and successful rather than the average citizen.
In Moscow, the strikingly modern 354m -- 448m with spire -- Federation Tower will house 200 luxury apartments as well as offices, restaurants and a fitness center. It will be Europe's tallest building when completed.
In keeping with international trends, many architects are concentrating on being eco-friendly.
New 300m bio-climatic towers planned for the La Defense business district west of Paris, including the Tour Generali and the Tour Phare, are to be built using new materials to reduce energy and water use.
"We are pioneers," said Bernard Bled, who heads up the La Defense Public Development Agency that plans to build the new towers. "We want to show how it's possible to build towers that are highly energy efficient and set new standards in sustainable development."
The Tour Phare (meaning lighthouse), designed by radical Californian architect Thom Mayne, is shaped like an irregular curved ship's funnel. A double-skinned facade will provide natural ventilation while windmills atop the tower will provide power to cool the building.
The higher cost of building eco-friendly towers does not appear to be putting off prospective investors.
Bled said there was interest from investors in Asia, Australia,North America and Europe.
Bahrain's wind-powered World Trade Center is another example of the move to sustainable building. Moscow's Russia Tower and others aim to conserve energy through triple glazing and recycling rainfall.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy