Since 2006, kazakhstan’s new capital city of astana, itself an enormous hub of construction since it inherited the title in 1997, has been home to one of the world’s most impressive and visually futuristic pyramids, known as the palace of peace and reconciliation. it was designed by british super-architects foster + partners, cost 8.74 billion kazakh tenge (i don’t need to tell you bright young humans that this equates to approx. £35m) and was built to accommodate the triennial ‘congress of world and traditional religions’. if there was ever a positive to be found for the existence of the idiocy we know and love as religion, this building could be it, as after an impressively rapid 2 years of design and construction, the end product is a masterpiece.

The visible 5-storey pyramid section of the palace is as high as its base is wide (203ft) and is to be the centrepiece of the country’s ‘presidential park’.

A plan of the pyramid. the interior is just as impressive as the outer skin. this place is like a tardis and below the above-ground pyramid itself sits, amongst other things, an enormous 1’500 seat opera house – see final photo below.

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Dubai has garnered much attention in recent years with a never-ending supply of architectural wonders being built, or proposed, at a head spinning pace. Mostly these towering structures are grand and tall, but some are also green. We’ve covered many an ambitious Dubai skyscraper scheme here at Inhabitat, including David Fisher’s Rotating Tower, but there is new news from Fisher’s Dynamic Architecture firm. This self-sufficient, sun and wind powered design is making headlines once again as the Italian-Israeli architect has just unveiled the latest design for his twirling tower, and construction is set to begin this month!

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Called Lilypads, these are basically zero-emission floating homes that uses solar, wind, tidal and biomass power to generate energy for its inhabitants.

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