ECB's new boondoggle

The ECB has a beautiful new headquarters being built.  It is only 48 stories tall (185 m), yet the cost is soaring to over 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion), and the completion date has been pushed back to 2014.   This is more expensive than the Burj Khalifa, which only cost $1.5 billion.

"The cost blowout comes as the ECB castigates profligate European governments for failing to control their own spending. It’s also another setback for a construction project that was delayed in 2008 when bids exceeded the ECB’s budget in the initial tender process. The building was originally scheduled for completion in 2011."
--http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-20/ecb-says-cost-of-new-frankfurt-skyscraper-soars-by-up-to-41-percent

One Wilshire

This contains the world's densest "meet-me" room. Over 260 ISPs connect their networks here. 

"One tends to think of the internet as a redundant system of remote carriers peppered throughout the world, but in order for the net to function the carriers have to physically connect somewhere. For the Pacific Rim, the main connection point is the One Wilshire building in downtown Los Angeles. If this facility went down, most of California and parts of the rest of the world would not be able to connect to the internet."

NAP of the Americas in Miami

This massive building in Miami has 750,000 square feet of data center space and hosts one of the root servers of the internet.  Almost all of the internet traffic to South America flows through this building.

"Miami has been ranked as one of the top-five best interconnected cities in the world, ahead of San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Terremark's NAP of the Americas makes Miami the only city in the U.S. where Optical, Ethernet, MPLS, Voice and Internet traffic is handed off in a single location.  The NAP of the Americas is located in downtown Miami, an area that has numerous telecommunications carrier facilities, fiber loops, international cable landings and multiple power grids. The convergence of telecommunications infrastructure is why global carriers, ISPs and other Internet-related businesses, educational institutions, and enterprises have chosen to become Terremark clients.
Switching the majority of South America, Central America and the Caribbean's layer-1, layer-2 and layer-3 traffic bound to more than 148 countries in the world, makes the NAP of the Americas the unrivaled gateway to the Americas."
--http://www.terremark.com/data-centers/americas/nap-americas.aspx

Data Center in NYC

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/realestate/commercial/in-former-new-york-telephone-tower-sabey-corp-plans-data-centers.htm

The former New York Telephone Company building at 375 Pearl Street will be converted into a massive data center using more than one million square feet of space. “This is definitely the tallest data center, and maybe the largest high-rise data center in the world”.

The most expensive building in the world

One World Trade Center, expected to open in Spring 2013, will cost an estimated $3.8 billion, making it the most expensive building in the world.  By contrast, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai cost only $1.5 billion.  1WTC will have a really, really tall pole attached to it, which will make it the 3rd tallest building in the world, at a symbolic 1776 feet.  However, the highest usable floor space will not be as high as Willis/Sears Tower in Chicago.

It will immediately be a white elephant.  "It turns out that there are plenty of people, including former New York State officials and New York City developers, who believe that 1 World Trade Center is folly. “An emotionally induced misuse of money,” said one such person. “You can only understand this as a political statement,” said another. “It makes no sense as a commercial real estate endeavor.”

Ok then, if it makes us feel better about ourselves, it is worth it right?

Pan African Parliament

This is in Midrand (Johannesburg), South Africa.  Paid for by South African taxpayers.

The Berlaymonster

The Berlaymont is the iconic headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels.  It is in the shape of a cross.

NATO Headquarters

New NATO headquarters in Brussels expected to be completed in 2015.

New African Union headquarters opens in Addis Ababa

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-01/30/content_14502354.htm

It was paid for by the Chinese government.