We have some new and beautiful pictures of Santiago city in Chile with the new Costanera Center and its rising Gran Torre Santiago (Spanish for “Grand Santiago Tower”).

With a height of 300 metres (980 ft) the Gran Torre Santiago of the Costanera Center building project is the tallest building in South America and second tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere.

These photos were taken by Mr. Ivan Ossandon and shared on Flickr.

(Image Credit: Santiago #3 by Ivan Ossandon, on Flickr)

This is one of the world’s tallest office building as well and is part of the Costanera Center Santiago project complex which also includes a proposal to build two other towers along with it which will be 170 meters high.

(Image Credit: Santiago #2 by Ivan Ossandon, on Flickr)

Though the building is nor yet complete it already has a open and famous mega shopping mall with 6 floors in it called the – Mall Costanera Center Santiago.

(Image Credit: Santiago #1 by Ivan Ossandon, on Flickr)

This is news from a popular email forward that’s going around these days called the Olympic Tower 2016. That email had these pictures of a giant solar-powered building with a waterfall falling from the top of the building to the bottom covering the whole front facade of the building. Like you can see in the pictures here looks like a giant cascade of water suddenly appearing in mid-air and falling down from the sky.

According to the email this tower will be both an observation tower, and a welcome sign for the visitors arriving by air and by sea for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro, Summer Olympic Games.

However contrary to claims there no guarantee yet from the Brazilian Rio Olympic Games organizers that this building will ever be built.  So it is still just a concept and pictures from a architecture firm’s proposal of a wonderful building submitted for a competition in 2009 by RAFAA, a Zurich based architecture and design studio.

www.hoax-slayer.com, a website that analyses interesting email forward like this, had contacted the designers to verify this claim and they have said  that they, “don’t have any confirmation from the local authorities so far and don’t know if this project will ever happen!

According to the proposal, this giant Solar City Tower will be based in an island called Cotonduba, just off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.It will utilizes solar energy during the day with its solo power panels, to pump the sea water as seen in the model. The waterfall like down movement of the water will again be utilized to turn the turbines and produce even more power to work the system at night time. (Can they repeatedly generate power like this? I don’t know how practical it is according to physics laws to achieve such a thing!)

This tower will have  lifts that will take the visitors to the top, where the view will be fantastic. It also includes plans for bungee jumping from a special platform.

The designing firm RAFAA, also want the organisers to also consider another important point by building this solar powered tower.  In 1992, Rio de Janeiro hosted a famous United Nations Earth Summit, which is still talked about today. The proposal designers wanted Rio to once again be the starting point for a global green movement and for a sustainable development of urban structures and homes. They say, it will perhaps even become a symbol for the first zero carbon footprint Olympic Games.

How marvelous it will be if this building get built?

Update: I later found out that the tower top will be 105 meters above sea level. But there was no mention of how tall the tower only will be or other important details about we hear in other tower design proposal or news.

If you are wondering what is the tallest tower in the world it is a new tower in Tokyo, Japan called the Tokyo Sky Tree. It was only recently completed (29th February 2012) and will be opened publicly on the 22nd of May 2012. Below you can see some pictures and charts about this world’s tallest tower.

The full height of the Tokyo Sky Tree tower is 634.0 metres or 2,080 feet. It was built by Tobu Railway and a group of six terrestrial broadcasters of Japan including the famous Japanese NHK TV station. So as you can guess the main purpose for building this super tall tower was to relay television and radio broadcast signals in Tokyo city.

This new tower in Tokyo, Japan is the tallest tower in the world regardless of whether the tower is free standing or supported. When the Tokyo Sky Tree tower topped out at 634 meters it beat the world’s tallest free standing tower which was the 600 meter tall Canton Tower in China. It also took over the record for the world’s tallest tower regardless of whether the tower was free standing or supported which since 1991 belonged to the KVLY-TV mast (formerly the KTHI-TV mast) which stands at 628.8 m (2,063 ft) in Blanchard, Traill County, North Dakota, United States. Its sad to note that the tallest tower ever built was the Warsaw Radio Mast in Poland which stood at 646.38 metres (2,120.67 ft) collapsed in 1991. If that Warsaw Radio Tower was still there Tokyo Tower won’t be the tallest tower today.

Before this Tokyo Sky Tree was built Tokyo city already had a very tall tower called the Tokyo Tower serving the same broadcasting purpose with an impressive height of 333 meters or 1093 feet. However that tower’s height was not enough to give complete coverage for the city because of recent high-rise buildings and skyscraper constructions around it which was obstructing broadcast coverage.

The above photograph shows the old Tokyo Tower which as you can see is now surrounded by tall skyscrapers obstructing its broadcasting capabilities.

Now with this Tokyo Sky Tree, Tokyo will not only once again have complete terrestrial television broadcasting coverage but also boast of having the tallest tower in the world and the second tallest structure in the world. (The tallest structure in the world is the Burj Kalifah Building in Dubai, UAE)

Here is a diagram of the five tallest towers in the world. As you can see this new Tokyo tower is nearly 100 feet taller than its nearest rivel, the Canton Tower and about 300 feet taller than the world famous Toronto CN Tower.

Though today Tokyo Sky Tree is the tallest tower, for a long time in recent history the tallest tower in the world was the CN tower in Toronto, Canada. It was surpassed only recently by the beautiful tower called Canton Tower (600 meter, 1,968.5 ft) in Guangdong province of China. That was in 2010. But Canton tower held that glory only for a short time. Within a year the record for the world’s tallest tower was grabbed by this Tokyo Sky Tree. Now a question is how long will Tokyo Sky Tree tower hold the record for the world’s tallest tower?

In recent years there has been a race among nations specially in Asia to build the tallest towers and buildings. Already Saudi Arabia is building a supertall skyscraper called the Kingdom Tower (formerly called Mile High Tower) whose final height is not yet revealed but leaked news and speculation is that it will be nearly a mile height and definitely taller than the current world’s tallest structure, the Burj Kalifah Building in Dubai. India is also building a structure called India Tower which is 700 meters or nearly 200 feet taller than this new Tokyo Sky Tree. However lucky for Tokyo, though both of these under-construction projects have the term “Tower” in their name they both are not towers in the strictest sense but buildings. So even as scheduled these new supertall structures are completed in 2016, Tokyo Sky Tree Tower will still hold the record for the tallest tower in the world. But for how long remains to be seen.

Japanese will no doubt love to see this tower hold on to that record as long as the Toronto CN Tower did. But skyscraper enthusiasts will like to see the record broken as soon as possible like the Tokyo Sky Tree overtook Canton Tower within a year!