The London 2012 Olympic stadium is a £450 million project. The athletics stadium will allow for 80'000 seats, and it will be converted into a more easily maintained 25'000 seat venue after the Games. The lighting and sound systems will be supported by a roof that will stretch around the Stadium. Of course, it will also provide cover and a base for special effects during the ceremonies. The Stadium will be built to international track and field standards for athletes. The Olympic Stadium will be located on an island at the south of the Olympic Park within easy walking distance of the Olympic Village and warm-up facilities.  The site will be surrounded on three sides by waterways.

The Strata tower, a forty story, luxury residential building designed by Asymptote Architecture. It is currently being built at the incredible Al Raha Beach waterfront in Abu Dhabi and it should be completed by early 2011. It will be 160 meters high, making it the tallest building of the Al Dana precinct.  The Strata Tower has an "articulate, striking physical presence" that seeks to "encapsulate meaning through the use of abstract form drawn from both local cultural landscapes and motifs and dynamic forces of global influence".

The Al Raha Beach Development is another project in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.  It will allow 120'000 people to leave in the 11-kilometre water front of Al Raha Beach, which is set to become one of the greatest waterfront cities in the world. The project is very large (500 hectares) and will therefore be part of a rail, bus, fast ferry and water taxi network of Abu Dhabi. Several Canals will allow the waterway transport. With this incredible project, Abu Dhabi seeks to becom a "great Arabian water city". It will include residential and commercial buildings, as well as shopping streets and recreationnal spaces.

Beijing’s new seven-level Olympic stadium is a $500 million project. Finishing touches are still being added to the stadium that will be able to seat as many as 91'000 spectators during the Olympic Games starting August 9, 2008. After the Games, temporary seating will be removed, reducing the the capacity to 80'000. This will also be the case of the London Olympic Stadium. The National Stadium, also known as the "Bird's Nest" for its lattice work of interwoven steel, has been designed by Herzog & de Meuron. It has made such an impact as to displace late Chinese leader Mao Zedong's face from commemorative Olympic bank notes.

The Burj Dubai that is currently under construction in Dubai and is already the world's tallest building (it will eventually stand 818m) has been held up. In March, Emaar Properties, the manager of the world's tallest tower block, had announced a four month delay but still said the tower would be completed before the en of 2008. However, they now say that work is behind schedule and will be delayed by another eight to nine months. You can imagine investors are probably not very happy.

The project of the Central Chinese Television CCTV headquarters in Beijing is currently under construction. It has an estimated construction cost of $600 million, and it should be completed in time for the Beijing Olympics this year. However, rumors annouce it will not be ready before summer 2009. The project is being executed by a combined Arup team from East Asia and Europe Divisions. Arup provides the engineering design services for the structure. It is a sub-consultant to the Office for Metroplitan Architecture (OMA) led by Rem Koolhaas, which was awarded the design contract at the end of 2002 after an international architectural design competition. The construction began in December 2004.

You probably already heard of Dubai's Rotating Building, but here is another one. You can see that rotation does not have to be necessarily around a vertical axis. Dubai thought it had seen it all, but this proves they didn't. (This is not the Great Wheel that should get built in Dubai Land). The design comes from the dutch Royal Haskoning (who recently also won a bridge design competition in Dubai), which has won a prestigious competition organised by the Great Wheel Corporation for a hotel accommodation.