Not interested in making friends in the playground, Japan has decided to build a free-standing tower to rival France's Eiffel Tower and Canada's CN Tower.

The Asian nation has started construction of a 611m telecommunications tower that will stand 57m higher than the CN Tower and will have a design that some hope could become as iconic as the Eiffel Tower.

Named the Tokyo Sky Tree, the tower is being built in Sumida, Tokyo and was designed by Tadao Ando.

The base of the tower is shaped as a triangle and moves to circular as it progresses upwards. There will be observation decks at 350m and 450m.

Its supporters hope this varied appearance will give the tower iconic status.

Its location was under dispute for many years, as local politicians argued where the most earthquake-safe place to build it would be. Let's hope they got it right.

Having a bad day? Then just imagine being a demolition worker on this job.

Chinese engineers used 190 tonnes of explosives to blow up a temporary barrier used during construction of the Three Gorges Dam.

The massive blast created more than 170,000 cubic metres of concrete fragments and unleashed the full force of the Yangtze River upon the world's largest hydroelectric project.

And here's betting it made any workers frustrated with the fillings in their sandwiches or angry at their low pay - feel instantly better.

While the detonate button was pushed way back in 2006, the blast still rates as the world's toughest demolition job.

I just wonder, as a worker, how do you ever top the job where you blasted a 500m long dam sky-high?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This imposing ramshackle home-made skyscraper (video below) is the brain child of Russian gangster Nikolai Sutyagin and also believed to be the tallest wooden house.

Started in 1992, the house was originally just two storeys but after numerous additions now rises to around 13 storeys (no one is too sure) to 44m.

Sutyagin, a construction boss himself, decided he wasn't using the roof space well enough after a trip to see houses in Norway and Japan. So he added another three floors himself.

But that just didn't look right, he claims, so up and up and up it went.

A spell in jail ruined Sutyagin's finances and he now lives in four rooms at the bottom of the tangled house.

Neighbours want the building torn down, but Sutyagin has erected a roof around the second floor that he says lets him claim everything above is just decoration.