The Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibtion Centre looks a lot like something out of Star Wars. Unlike the traditional high-rise building, the design for the Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre accommodates all primary functions, such as the convention centre, hotel rooms, apartments, offices and retail space in a giant sphere.

Whatever next for the Arabian city that has an artificial ski slope covered in snow even when the temperature hits 50C? Not to mention the world’s tallest building, some 7,000 metres (2,300 ft) high, rising above palm-shaped artificial archipelagos in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. Oh, and a growth rate of 16% and a population where foreigners in need of “luxury” homes outnumber locals.

Well, what about the world’s first rotating skyscraper?

Commissioned by the Dubai Property Ring, a firm of UK-based developers, the 30-storey apartment block will use solar energy to power 20 electric motors that will rotate the tower through 360 degrees over the course of a week.

“This will be a fair building,” says Nick Cooper, the British engineer working with MG Bennet and Associates of Rotherham, which will build the mechanism. “Everybody will have the same views for the same amount of time.”

Mr Cooper is not referring to “fair” as in “funfair” – though the building is, it has to be said, the spectacular proposed centrepiece of the giant City of Arabia amusement park, complete with animatronic dinosaurs, which is due to open in 2009.

Time Residences will comprise 200 apartments. Its 80,000-tonne bulk will rest on a series of more or less friction-free polymer bearings. “It moves very slowly,” says Mr Cooper. “It is not a theme park ride.”

Paris has chosen an American architect to build the French capital’s tallest new building since the Eiffel Tower in the 19th Century.
The new curving skyscraper will be the centrepiece of a redevelopment project in the north-west of Paris.
Thom Mayne’s Los Angeles-based company Morphosis beat off rivals as prestigious as the UK’s Norman Foster and France’s Jean Nouvel.
Building regulations have kept tall buildings out of Paris for 30 years.
One notable exception is the Tour Montparnasse which rises 180 metres (590 ft) in the south-west of the capital.
An international jury announced the winner, following a contest organised by French property group Unibail as part of a project to revamp La Defense business district.
The Paris city government opposes plans for a new skyscraper in the district, but the project is backed by French public body EPAD, which is in charge of the district’s wider renovation, AFP news agency reports.

New Paris Skyscraper