While other banks are drowning in the global financial crisis, HSBC is considering building swimming pools all around the world.

In what could be a dire effort to diversify its business during the slowdown, the bank wants to replicate the success of a Mumbai swimming pool that has shocked locals.

Working with Ogilvy & Mather, the bank built a swimming pool in Mumbai that has an aerial photograph of the New York skyline stuck to its floor.

The idea was to show the adverse impact of climate change by submerging the city in water, while also promoting a HSBC £50m climate change initiative.

Perhaps HSBC should approach the London's Olympic bosses to sponsor the aquatic centre pool - the 2012 budget could sure use the cash and surely the swimmers wouldn't mind.

When all that freedom and wide open space gets a bit too much, what is a person to do? Apparently, build an adult-sized birdcage.

Chinese man Zhu Hu built the 5m high cage in the backyard of his home at the foot of Yuhuang mountain in Hangzhou after being inspired by the birds he keeps.

He reckons hanging out in the cage is the perfect way for his family to relax.

"It feels very secure and happy spending time inside the birdcage. And also it lets us realise how birds must feel," he said.

Visitors to the area bizarrely said the birdcage worked - combining the human habitat and the natural environment well.

Wonder what the local birds think?

While the rest of the world is catching the construction slowdown sniffles, Shanghai seems to have contracted a case of Dubai's mega-building mania.

Three months after opening the world's second tallest skyscraper, the Chinese city will start construction on Saturday of an even taller building - the 632m Shanghai Centre.

The 121-storey steel and glass skyscraper was designed by Gensler and has been nicknamed the Dragon because it will supposedly look like a dragon's tail.

In China, dragons are believed to be able to control the weather, and this skyscraper could possibly do just that.

Designers say its spiral shape will minimise wind resistance and energy consumption and that 54 wind turbines will sit at the top of the building.

Like all developers of super-tall buildings, Gu Jianping, managing director of the Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Group says that by the time the building is open in 2014 the economy will be booming.

"Launching construction at this time will help boost Shanghai's confidence in fighting the financial crisis," he said.

He obviously hasn't heard of the never-fail "skyscraper index".

Star Trek's Enterprise could be zooming its way to Dubai to save the troubled emirate from property implosion.

At least that is what a development vaguely resembling a Trekkie communicator badge planned for the troubled emirate suggests.

The Atrium is a 278m tower designed by American firm Pickard Chiltern that rises from a shared podium as two separate towers and halfway up moulds into a single arching tower.

Australian developer QMM will build the skyscraper with the Sunland Group on Dubai's coast and plans to have its 1,000 luxury apartments open by 2013.

Obviously the news that Dubai is on the brink of a bust travels slow down under.

US president-elect Barack Obama is about to go on a construction spending spree, building new schools, bridges, roads and pipelines.

Unveiling his economic team, Obama announced he is spending his way out of the recession with a building bonaza worth up to £463bn.

The spendaholic president-elect hopes to create 2.5m jobs by 2011 with a public works programme that could rival the programme that dragged the US out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Although details have been scant so far, insiders say work could start within months.

CNN reports that some 3,000 projects costing £11.6bn could be under contract in less than 90 days. Many of these would be addressing a backlog of projects, such as bridge strengthening and road repaving.

Experts are also calling for the construction of new transport corridors that bundle together highways, high-speed rail, pipelines and utility lines.

Last month this blog ran a post on America's crumbling infrastructure and the 10 projects the US desperately needs.

I've often thought that fashion designers are like builders with nicer fingernails or like architects but worse at maths.

They are out there in all their fabulous glory constructing something new, but unlike builders they're working with fabric not bricks.

But finally the divide between building and fashion has been breached.

Designer Jean Charles de Castelbajac has turned to the world's favourite building blocks for inspiration - and built nifty Lego hats for his doll-like models.

While, technically they are hard hats, I don't think we will see any on building sites any time soon. But perhaps this might inspire some contractor out there with nice fingernails to take to a sewing machine.

Or maybe builder's bum will finally become fabulous, darling.

Pop the champagne, the bottle opener has been named the year's best skyscraper!

The 492m Shanghai World Financial Centre, which opened earlier this year, has been judged the best skyscraper completed this year by an international group of architects.

Likened to a bottle opener because of the void at its top that reduces the stresses of wind pressure, the tall building was recognised for its sleek form and sustainability.

The tower, which is the second tallest building in the world, was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and lays claim to having the world's tallest observation deck.

Architect Tim Johnson, who led the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's selection committee, praised the building's innovative structural design which uses steel trusses to make the building lighter.

The tower's tapered form creates the impression it is dissolving into the heavens, he added.

Even the glitz and glam of a £13.5m party in Dubai over the weekend could not hide the news that the emirate is heading steadily towards bust.

The boom of fireworks to celebrate the launch of the £1bn Atlantis Resort could not quiet the shrieks of get-rich-quick investors watching as their credit evaporates.

An interesting article in the Times today looks at the pressures on Dubai's property market and how it is faring in the credit crunch.

And it isn't good news. The Guardian also features a dire article on Emaar Properties' announcement that Dubai will pull back on its building spree and reduce supply.

It seems the old skyscraper theory as reported on another CJ blog could be true - when people start talking about building the biggest skyscraper look out for a financial collapse heading your way.

A major face-lift is earmarked for the Tom Bradley International Terminal by 2013 as well as a cross-field taxiway, midfield concourse and a passenger processing facility (more pics).

Plans show the Bradley and midfield concourse will be linked by a soaring sky bridge over the taxiway, giving passengers views of the Californian ocean, mountains and city.

"We want to change LAX into L.A. wow," Curt Fentress said.

Fentress is behind one of America's best airports - the Denver International. Including Denver, here are 5 Great Airports:

5. Denver International

Not only set among visually spectacular scenery, this airport has a roof line that mimics the peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

4. Beijing Capital International

Designed by Foster + Partners, the airport features a soaring aeordynamic roof and dragon-like form representing traditional China. It is also the world's largest airport building.

3. Marrakesh Menara, Morocco
This elegant structure cleverly references Arabic patterns while promoting modernism. The openings in the exo-skeleton facade are filled with etched glass panels that feature a secondary pattern.

2. Incheon International, Seoul

Also designed by Fentress, this airport has been voted best airport three times by the Airport Council International. Rejecting the cold and cavernous, it features a warm, curved facade.

1. Madrid Barajas

Designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, this airport has almost as many design awards as it has passengers. Its' undulating roof and use of graduated colour makes it a memorable stop over in even the eyes of even the most jetlagged passengers.

And here are some more great airports.

It couldn't really get worse. The final death toll from the collapse of the subway tunnel under construction in China has hit 21, with all hope gone of rescuing 13 missing workers.

After relentless searching, rescuers have been unable to find the missing labourers in the silt-filled tunnel in Hangzhou.

The men were trapped on 15 November when a 75m long section of the tunnel under construction collapsed.

The collapse caused a huge crater that sucked in 11 vehicles. Surrounding properties have had to be demolished to prevent further accidents.

"If the workers are trapped in the middle of the mire, it may take two or three days for rescuers to reach them. If they are at the bottom, it's hard to say when they can be reached," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Architects come up with some pretty crazy designs, but judging by these Photoshopped images, a computer can do an even better job.

Incredibly, at least one of these 11 homes are actually real. I'll let you decide which one.

As for the rest, anyone want to take a stab at building them?

Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has no intention of letting the economic downturn affect his slice of the world - he has just approved yet another landmark project.

The Dubai Smile, an eye-catching inverted metal bridge, has been approved as the seventh river crossing in the emirate and will be completed in 2012.

The 12 lane bridge, which is 61.6m wide and has a 100m high arch, will be capable of handing 24,000 vehicles an hour and cost about £110m to build.

The bridge will replace Dubai's Floating Bridge over Dubai Creek and aim to reduce appalling traffic congestion.

Despite multiple arrests this year, French spiderman Alain Robert is still doing what he does best - scaling skyscrapers.

The vertigo-suffering daredevil this week scaled the 33-storey City Tower in Jakarta, Indonesia, celebrating his feat with a spot of newspaper-reading atop the skyscraper.

Robert, who has scaled the Eiffel Tower, chose the City Tower to climb after police refused to let him scale Wisma Mulia.

He's had a tough time this year, getting arrested after climbing the New York Times building in June and a Hong Kong skyscraper in April.

Robert has scaled more than 85 giant structures around the world, usually using just his bare hands and climbing shoes.

Here is a slideshow of some of his crazier climbs and some frightening video footage.

His buildings become tourist attractions and his preliminary sketches are notoriously mad and impossible to follow.

So what would it be like to be a builder on one of Frank Gehry's over-the-top landmark projects?

Well, the Canadian architect has just finished his latest job - the transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario - and its builders have revealed what it is like to work with the man himself.

Ontario building firm EllisDon said it had a challenging time fulfilling Gehry's "complex design features and penchant for detail".

"Working collaboratively with the architects, consultants and subcontractors, we were able to address issues and come up with solutions that were innovative and constructible," EllisDon construction boss Jack Stelpstra said.

Not really shocking, but neither is the art gallery (see pics).

Probably Gehry's most placid design, it features a glass and Douglas-fir timber façade, a titanium and glass faced five-storey wing and a massive sculptural staircase.

A mini wind farm will be installed in Times Square this month to power the landmark's first eco-friendly billboard.

Office supplier Ricoh is paying for the £1.5m sign, which will be fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels (more details here).

But when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow, the 38m by 14m sign won't operate. At least that is the theory anyway.

The lights in Times Square are probably bright enough to power the solar panels themselves, allowing Ricoh to piggyback off other firms' electrical bills.

Ricoh claim the sign could save it £6,500 to £7,500 a year and prevent 18 tonnes of carbon entering the atmosphere a year.

Construction begins this month for a launch date of 4 December.

This is an amazing picture of the China subway collapse that has so far killed seven and left 14 missing.

Taken by the Associated Press, it shows the massive damage caused when a 75m long section of the tunnel under construction collapsed on the weekend in Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhejiang province.

The road above the tunnel appears to have collapsed and split in two, swallowing a car in the foreground of the shot.

Construction is supposedly well underway on a fitting addition to Benidorm's garish skyscrapers and fish and chip shops.

In Tempo is a 200m, 52-storey tower costing £35m that will be finished by 2010 - just in time for economically-challenged Brits' return to the package holiday scene.

Its design shows two gilded towers that are joined by an inverted diamond where the poshest apartments will be located - no Thomas Cook special rates here.

And in a fitting tribute to Benidorm's fish and chip shops (and the scavengers that congregate by them), fake seagulls will be suspended between the towers.

The M shaped building, which also looks like an 11, is supposed to be a tribute to the victims of Madrid's train bombings on 11 March 2004.

A fountain would probably have been more suitable.

Home might be where the heart is, but it is also a place to find a substantial dose of wacky. The following are just a tiny amount of the thousands of odd and unusual homes out there.

5. Shoe house, Pennsylvania There was an old woman who lived in a shoe - literally. This shoe house was built in 1948 by shoe man Colonel Mahlon Haines who handed an architect a boot and told him to turn it into a house. It has five levels, three bedrooms and is 14m long and 5m wide. It once had a snack bar in the heel.

4. Crooked House, Sopot, Poland

Not strictly inhabited, the Centrum Rezydant is a tavern called the Wonky Pub. Designed by Polish architect Szotynscy Zaleski it is the most photographed building in Poland and was inspured by the fairytale illustrations of Jan Marcin Szancer.

3. Cube Houses, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Designed by Dutch architect Piet Blom, these yellow homes are certainly eye-catching. The main building used to be a bridge across a major road with a promenade on top. Then Blom got involved and tilted the cube of the home 45 degrees, resting it on a hexagon-shaped pylon (more pics).

2. Bubble house, Tourette-Sur-Loup, France Listed as a historic monument, this house has been under construction for 35 years and still isn't finished. It has so far cost £5m to build and will cost around £500,000 to finish. Designed by Finnish architect Antti Lovag, it has three bedrooms, an indoor river, "bubble kernel" and cactus garden.

1. Toilet house, South Korea Some of man's best thinking is done in the toilet, so it seems this building could become a great "think tank". Built by Sim Jae-Duck, the chairman of the World Toilet Association, it aims to highlight the need for better sanitation. Its' real name is Haewoojae which means "a place of sanctuary where one can solve one's worries"...and a crossworld puzzle.

See the top 25 weird and wacky homes here.

The typical bleak and boring staff cafeteria has been turned on its head in Bangkok, where a hovering building provides all eaters with a view.

The Octospider is raised 8m over the ground, overlooking the buildings and land around it so that it is psychologically removed from the textile factory it services (more pics).

Steel stilts support the structure and its long and narrow form allows all hungry employees a seat with a view.

The factory owner wanted the cafeteria to be an escape from the factory floor. But if the food tastes as good as the building looks, here's betting production has fallen a bit.

It has given the world delicious takeaway and holistic medicine; now China has unveiled a mammoth stimulus package that could help the globe cope with the economic crisis.

Chinese leaders have announced a £375bn investment programme with a major focus on construction.

Roads, railways, airports, affordable housing and rural infrastructure have all been named as beneficiaries of the rescue package.

And its' implications could be felt all over the world, analysts claim.

The Boston Globe points out that cash-rich Chinese firms will be buying up construction equipment like Victoria Beckham collects designer handbags.

The newspaper points out that increased Chinese spending could just stop the recession from getting worse.

North Korea's hotel of doom has begun to stir from a 16-year coma.

According to multiple sources in the Communist country, work has restarted on Pyongyang's super-creepy 330m tall Ryugyong Hotel.

Looking more like a lair for an evil superpower, the hotel was started in 1987 but construction ground to a halt in 1992 amid rumours that funding had dried up and the hotel was engineered so badly it could never be inhabited.

But Egypt's Orascom group has come to the rescue and begun refurbishing the top floors of the building - putting in glass panels and installing telecommunications antennas.

But many experts worry the rusty structure - which has been exposed to the elements for 16 years - can ever be completed safely.

And maybe it shouldn't be. Apparently it would cost 10% of the starving country's GDP to finish the eyesore, which these days is airbrushed from photographs of the city.

If there is an upside to the stupidity of this project - it could be that it might finally allow one of its' most dedicated builders a change of scenery.

Local legend has it that a former worker is living in the rusted crane still atop the building, having refused to leave until work is restarted.

Hot and humid Dubai is planning the impossible - to stop its residents sweating.

As part of plans to get the Emirate's millionaires walking more, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) plans to build a network of air-conditioned road crossings.

The tube-like crossings will link buildings, roads and subways throughout the urban area - meaning a walk under the hot Middle Eastern sun will no longer require a change of clothes.

RTA chief executive of strategy Abdul Mohsen Ibrahim Younes said the scheme aimed to reduced the reliance on cars and help people avoid traffic jams.

It is not clear when the pilot project will commence or quite how the RTA aims to convince the super-rich to give up their cooled Bentleys and BMWs.

The Haiti school collapse that killed at least 90 people and left hundreds more injured has sparked concern over the safety of many of the country's buildings.

Rene Preval, the president of Haiti, has called for a review of construction guidelines, warning it is not just schools that are in danger, but homes and churches too.

He has blamed continual government turnover and a lack of respect for the law for lax building practices.

The concrete Petionville school near Port-au-Prince collapsed Friday as up to 700 students, teachers and their families and friends enjoyed a party at the school.

Preacher Fortin Augustin, who ran the school, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

It is believed a structural defect and a lack of steel reinforcement caused the collapse and that the school was poorly rebuilt after a partial collapse eight years ago.

But even with the president's support, is it even possible Haiti will ever be able to ensure the safety of the millions who live in ramshackle slums across the country?

Petionville's parliamentary spokesman Stephen Benoit has proposed freezing government spending on cars and travel to remedy "anarchic construction".

But even he isn't optimistic this would change much. As he told AP: "We need a new city. This is one catastrophe - but we have many more to come".

In a country where building codes are ignored by builders and inspectors alike, what can they do?

Borat's backwater birthplace of Kazakhstan has launched itself into the future with a space age transformation in Almaty.

Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss is converting the Soviet-style Republic Square Complex (top) into a futuristic, suspended, spiral vortex (bottom) (more pics).

At the ground floor, a new plaza will be created within a 38m spiral that will connect houses at one end to shops at the other.

Above the spiral, the building splits into five areas that will be connected by courtyards.

It is just the latest crazy Borat-style scheme in Kazakhstan to remind the rest of the world of its' wealth - another is a diamond inlaid credit card being issued to the super-rich.

As far as monuments go, the Statue of Liberty has long been the most famous girl in the world.

But the 46m statue in New York is set to get a big brother in the form of the world's biggest Buddha planned for construction in India.

The Maitreya Buddha will be three times the size of Liberty, standing 152m tall, and will be built in the super-poor town of Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh, in north India.

UK engineers at the Casting Development Centre in Sheffield have been helping with the design of the statue, which must last 1,000 years.

The statue will consist of 6,000 bronze aluminium panels and sit upon a 17-storey temple that will include 15 shrine rooms - one of them 140m high.

The total project is estimated to cost around US$250m and will also include healthcare and education initiatives to boost the lives of people living in Kushinagar.

Louisville, Kentucky isn't known around the world for very much - it's the home of the Kentucky Derby and Tom Cruise lived there once apparently.

But a project is under construction that could put the Louisville skyline firmly on the map.

A consortium of local developers has started work on a building that will look like a wonky and upside-down three-legged chair when completed.

The 62-storey Museum Plaza will include three towers of various heights and an "island" building that will hover 22-storeys in the air.

But construction of the iconic building has been as unfortunate as its design.

Work was halted in January when foundation work caused severe vibrations in nearby 19th century buildings.

Workers returned to the site in June create a new electrical transmission system for the downtown area and demolish a transmission tower on site.

But even though work is happening, the developers are yet to secure a US$300m construction loan needed to complete the project.

And with the financial markets in the US not looking too peachy, what happens after January when the electrical work is finished, is anyone's guess.

Good to see co-developer Craig Greenberg is optimistic: "It's a question of when, not if (it is built)," he told a local newspaper.

He had wanted his own skyscraper, but it seems U2 singer Bono still hasn't found what he is looking for, after plans to build the U2 Tower in Dublin were scrapped last week.

The Dublin Docklands Development Authority has decided to suspend negotiations to build the tower on the River Liffey for 12 months in the hope the market recovers.

The 120m skyscraper was to become Dublin's tallest building and include a recording studio for the supergroup in a pod on top.

The proposed roof was to house wind-generated electrical turbines and solar panels, while the sides of the building were to be metal-paneled to look like fish scales.

But many have doubted the ambitious plans would ever be realised, as conservationists have managed to shoot down other skyscraper projects proposed for low-rise Dublin.

Bono and his bandmates were all involved in the project through their involvement with developer Geranger, which had won preferred bidder status to design, construct and finance the tower.

Looks like Bono might have to Walk On.

If there is a skyline changing almost as rapidly as Dubai's, it has to be Suzhou's in China.

Known as the "Venice of the East", the city is undergoing a real transformation.

Construction has started on the 301m Gate of the Orient. Designed by RMJM London, the 66-storey building is special because it consists of two towers that come together at the top to form an arch.

The arch is an important symbol in Suzhou, which is also home to the 2,500-year-old Pan Gate. You could say, the Gate of the Orient is its' modern equivalent.

It is due for completion next year, by which time construction should have started on a few other towers planned for the city's skyline.