While the US has in years past been the home of the world's greatest architectural creations, the future of record-setting buildings will likely take place in other locales around the world.

Primary attention is on the Burj Dubai, which offers the opportunity for "sky living" in its expected height of over 2,600 feet. The structure will include the Giorgio Armani Hotel, as well as floors of apartments also decorated by Armani, with no doubt the most spectacular views of any in the world.The rest of the building will be taken up by office space, restaurants, shopping and from the sound of it, pretty much anything  one might want. Of course at $4,000 a square foot for rental prices at opening date of September 2009, only the very best will be able to afford to step foot there.

Even in construction, it has surpassed the CN Tower's height a year ago at 1,822 feet, and had been hailed as the tallest manmade structure on earth-- and it's not even finished yet.

Not far away is the site of another unique building, scheduled to break ground next month, and described as a "Timepiece Building."   55 degree Time Dubai is the first of 24 such buildings planned to be placed around the world, one in each time zone, that will rotate in synchronicity, powered by solar devices, providing spaceholders a 360-degree view of their surroundings each seven days.

The building, which won the international CNBC award for best "High Rise" architecturally designed building of 2007, is planned to open for business on 11/11/11.

For those enamored of the Transformers movie, the next offering in Dubai (with a second in Moscow scheduled soon after) is this Twirling Tower by David Fisher. While the demonstration video never really shows if it turns into Optimus Prime, it does show a speed of movement that is potentially disheartening for potential residents.

Puny compared to the others, at 80 stories, this one still gets bonus points for imagination.

Fisher says the construction will move quickly, because most of this building will be pre-fabricated and shipped in. Occupancy is expected in late 2010.

Dubai isn't the only place where architecture is piercing the sky and opening eyes.  Mumbai, India will be the home of  this egg-shaped building which draws heavily on Cybertecture, which means that constructing a building is "no longer (only) about concrete, steel and glass, but also the new intangible materials of technology, multimedia, intelligence and interactivity."

This predominantly green building draws heavily on alternate energy sources such as wind turbines and passive solar design as well as using a planted garden inside the top of the egg structure to help divert heat from inside.

Another interesting feature of this project, due to open in 2010, are the fully-loaded bathrooms that will monitor health readings of those who work there and will even forward on information of potential ill health to a doctor for analysis. 

Last but not least is the biggest daddy of them all--literally. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be the home of the Mile-High Tower, designed at 5,250 feet, 350 floors of prime rental space.

The constuction concerns include serious sway factors as the tower gets higher, as well as temperature concerns  as the top will be so tall, it will at times approach freezing temperatures, while the bottom is still squarely dealing with desert heat. But from the top, it will also be possible to see the Middle East, North Africa AND the Indian Ocean. There's nowhere else on Earth you can do that. Stay tuned for further developments.