Construction of One World Trade Center reached its halfway point Thursday in lower Manhattan, according to reports.

Steel beams marked the 52nd floor, bringing the project that much closer to completion. When done, the skyscraper – which will be named Freedom Tower – will stand 104 floors tall. It has now hit the 600-foot mark.

An antenna, which will be added to the top of the tower, will extend it to 1,776 feet. The number 1776 will be historically symbolic, but will make the tower the tallest building in the United States.

The building is being built on the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Plans are moving forward on Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the latest contender for the mantle of “world’s tallest building.”

Part of the 23-million-square-meter project known as Kingdom City, the tower is slotted for 1001 meters, 173 meters taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the current record holder, which opened earlier this year.

Contractors are currently bidding for the right to build the skyscraper, according to the National. The project is being developed by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, one of the richest men in the world.

The project has been discussed for several years, but there has been a flurry of activity in recent years. Construction companies have been asked to submit bids three times this year, accounting for changes in the market and the tower’s design.

According to the National, bidders include Six Construct, a Belgian company that worked on the Burj Khalifa, and its Saudi partner, El Seif Engineering Contracting; Australia’s Multiplex Construction; and Saudi BinLadin Group, one of the biggest construction companies in the region.

If built to the current plan, Kingdom Tower would move past Burj Khalifa, but still faces competition for the “world’s tallest” title. The Burj Mubarak Al Kabir proposed for Kuwait is also planned for 1001 meters, and the Murjan Tower in Bahrain is slotted for 1022 meters, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

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Ice skating in Chicago in January is nothing new. Doing it on the 94th floor of a downtown skyscraper certainly is.

Officials at the 100-story John Hancock Center said Thursday that they’re installing a rink that will allow visitors to skate at 1,000 feet up in the air.

About 20 people at a time will be able to skate on the 1,000-square foot rink. It will be open from January through March.

The rink actually won’t be made of ice. It will be made of a synthetic material that creates a hard, plastic floor with a slick silicone glaze.

It’s an attempt to attract more visitors to the building during a normally slow time of year. The 94th floor also has an open-air skywalk and a cafe.

The grand opening is scheduled for Jan. 1.

On October 21, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates unveiled its slender, cone-shaped design for what will become one of Asia’s tallest buildings.

Lotte Super Tower 123

The Lotte Super Tower 123, so named because it will have 123 stories, will be built over a transportation hub near the Han River in the Jamsil shopping and entertainment section of Seoul, South Korea. The light-toned glass and metal-accented structure blends a modern aesthetic with historic Korean art forms such as ceramics, porcelain, and calligraphy. “The tower’s uninterrupted curvature and gentle tapered form is reflective of Korean artistry,” said KPF design principal James von Klemperer, FAIA. “The seam that runs from top to bottom of the structure gestures toward the old city center.”

The 1,831-foot-tall building, designed to achieve LEED Silver, will house the corporate headquarters for the Lotte Group, a 66-year-old, $50 billion a year Korean business conglomerate. In addition, the high-rise will serve as a mixed-use vertical community with five distinct zones: retail, office, residential, hotel, and observation. Construction is scheduled to finish in 2014. If completed as planned, it will be the world’s second tallest building behind Adrian Smith’s 2,684-foot-tall Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

KPF is managing to stay busy during the recession with several large-scale commissions in South Korea. The New York-based practice developed the master plan for the Songdo International Business District, located on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land along Incheon’s waterfront, 40 miles west of Seoul. The $35 billion, 65,000-resident complex calls for offices, homes, shops, schools, and hotels—some of which KPF is designing. The firm’s 100-acre Songdo Central Park opened in August after three years of construction, and the 100-million-square-foot financial district developed by Gale International and Posco E&C, is expected to finish in 2015.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill has broken ground on the $1.7 billion Digital Media City Landmark Tower in Seoul, South Korea. With a planned height of 2,100 feet, it is expected to be East Asia’s tallest tower by the time it’s completed in 2014.

“The Korean construction industry has built supertall buildings around the world—most notably Burj Dubai,” which was built by Samsung Corporation, says Mustafa Abadan, AIA, SOM’s design partner in charge. “This building has become an important symbol for them in terms of bringing that expertise to bear at home.”

The 725,000-square-foot skyscraper—a concrete structure clad in glass and aluminum—appears to swell slightly as it rises, evoking traditional Korean pottery that is slender at the base and flared at the top. Snaking façade details, to be made of either extruded aluminum or stainless steel, soften the building’s corners, which Abadan says breaks up wind forces on the structure while also creating different shading conditions.

The tower is topped by a crown that extends beyond the inhabitable floors, which is meant to accentuate the building’s height, capture light, and help power an array of wind turbines. With a host of other energy-producing and energy-saving features, such as natural ventilation from a powerful stack effect, photovoltaic panels that double as shading elements, and radiant cooling through beams, SOM estimates it will be able to reduce the building’s energy use by up to 65 percent, compared to more conventional towers.

The 133-story skyscraper will offer retail spaces, offices, a hotel, residential units, and an observation deck; it will be the centerpiece of a new business district for media companies. It is one of several new towers planned for Seoul, including the Lotte Super Tower 123 by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and a Daniel Libeskind-desigend tower in the Yongsan International Business District.

Taiwan’s landmark skyscraper Taipei 101 is seeking to become the world’s tallest green building, its owner Taipei Financial Center Corporation (TFCC) announced yesterday. Harace Lin, chairman of TFCC, told a press conference that the company plans to apply for the Leadership in Energy and Environment

Design (LEED) certification for the building. To obtain that certification, Lin said, Taipei 101 will invest NT$60 million (US$1.8 million) over the next 18-month certification process to undergo hundreds of building modifications.

After the transformation is completed, Taipei 101 is estimated to save NT$20 million in energy costs each year. Lin said that Taipei 101 wants to be an international model of environmental protection and social responsibility.

“Taipei 101′s management team is expecting to make it an icon of green building industry in Taiwan and worldwide,” Lin said. “As the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101 aims to raise people’s awareness about our environment and be a pioneer of international green building certification for existing buildings, ” he added.

Saudi business mogul Prince al-Waleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding company announced last week that it had signed an agreement for the construction of the world’s highest skyscraper.

According to the company’s statement, the skyscraper will be 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) high and will be built in the city of Jeddah off the Red Sea. Dubai’s Emaar Properties real estate company will be in charge of developing the project.

The project, named Kingdom Tower, will spread over 23 million square meters and will include commerce, housing and office areas. It will be built not far from Jeddah’s international airport.

The total cost of the project is estimated at some $27 billion, and the tallest tower in the world will be built in its center.

The tallest tower in the world today is Burj Dubai, which is 800 meters (2,625 feet) hight and is still being built by Emaar.

Stay tuned for some pictures to follow…..

The Sears Tower will be getting a ‘green’ upgrade that includes wind turbines, roof gardens and solar panels will join the pair of antennas atop the Sears Tower’s staggered rooftops, said building officials who announced Wednesday that the skyscraper would undergo a $350 million green renovation.

The 5-year project would reduce the tower’s electricity use by 80 percent and save 24 million gallons of water a year, building owners and architects said. Separately, a 50-story, 500-room privately funded luxury hotel with its own green components would be built next to the skyscraper in 3 1/2 to 5 years.

The country’s tallest building – the 412m Al Hamra Tower - is on track to open in 2010, construction officials have confirmed.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merill, the tower is being built in Kuwait City by Turner Construction with Ahmadiah Contracting and Trading Company and will be the world’s largest sculpted tower once completed.

The supertall will become boring office space when it officially opens at the end of 2010, but it will also feature some cinemas and an IMAX screen.

Topping out is expected later this year.

According to Emporis, work has stopped on 124 of the 1,431 tall buildings that are already underway. Emporis is the world’s largest provider of global building data and defines skyscrapers as buildings at least 100 meters tall.

Considering that the US real estate crash was a major catalyst for this crisis, it is not surprising that construction has been curtailed sharply among the 203 skyscrapers under construction there. Twenty-one skyscrapers (10.3 per cent) have been set on ice.

In Asia the rate is exactly 10 per cent, with 84 out of 840 skyscraper projects logged in the Emporis’s database have stopped, although many Asian skyscrapers had ceased progress well before the crisis. The only skyscraper in the US or Europe known to have been on hold more than six months ago is Met 1 in Miami.

Less affected are European countries, where seven of 119 skyscraper projects (5.9 per cent) have stopped in 2008, including five in former Soviet states. Builders in South America have reacted less drastically, as only two out of 77 skyscraper projects there (2.6 per cent) have stopped. Mexico, Canada, and Central America, have been spared the worst so far, with only six out of 153 (3.9 per cent) projects shut down.

As construction cranes littering Dubai’s skyline go idle, it’s time to revisit that ever intriguing economic indicator: the Skyscraper Curse.

As this columnist has pointed out periodically, there’s an uncanny, if unscientific, correlation between financial crises and efforts to build the world’s tallest building. Look no further than Kuala Lumpur in 1997, Chicago in 1974, New York in 1930 and in biblical times with the Tower of Babel.

The human propensity for architectural overreach has been a surprisingly reliable omen. It’s not a stretch to think of such projects as visual punctuation marks. A giant billboard made of steel, glass, concrete and money. A common thread between skyscrapers and economic disasters has to be easy credit, which fuels irrational growth, valuations, and hubris.

The gleaming Burj Dubai, as fate would have it, recently overtook Taipei 101 as the tallest building at 818 meters (2,684 feet). Right on cue, Dubai’s economy is looking unthinkably shaky.

Work on what would have been the world’s tallest building, standing more than 1km high, has been put on hold for at least a year.

In a move that suggests the property bubble has finally popped in Dubai, government-owned developer Nakheel said it was halting “further work” on the building’s foundations.

It is not known just how much work has already been completed.

“This is part of our readjustment of our immediate business plans to better reflect the current market trends and match supply with demand,” Nakheel said in a statement.

It is a bitter blow for the firm, which has also downed tools on the Trump Tower and International Hotel in December and delayed work on projects including Frond N villas, Gateway Towers and schemes at the Waterfront and the Palm Jebel Ali.

The New York Times says the world’s hottest property market – Dubai – has gone cold and that this could be the beginning of a big property slide in the emirate.

Nakheel Tower (Nakheel/PA Wire)

Burj Dubai – the tallest building in the world – has hit topping out stage.

At least that is the rumour setting the internet ablaze at the moment – an official announcement has yet to be made.

Witnesses in Dubai say the tower has hit well over 800m and will not be going any higher and Wiki claims topping out was achieved 17 January.

Local media reports the skyscraper is being prepped for an 09/09/09 soft opening.

What we do know for sure is that workers are adding an antenna with a blinking light to the tower.

Samsung Engineering and Construction has confirmed its’ workers are on the job.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has released data demonstrating that, despite the economic downturn that overtook the world in 2008, it was the single most successful year for tall building construction in history, both in terms of skyscrapers built and average height achieved. Furthermore, iconic structures are expected to continue to rise across the globe, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, to the point that the world’s current tallest building (Taipei 101) is likely to be in 20th place worldwide by 2020.