If U.S. architects want to get back into the Guinness Book of World Records, they better start thinking big.

In an article today about China’s colossal new airport building (Terminal 3 is said to be the world’s largest), the International Herald Tribune point out:

China is home to the world’s largest shopping mall (the 650,000-square-meter, or seven-million-square-foot, South China Mall); the longest sea-crossing bridge (stretching 36 kilometers, or 22 miles, over part of the East China Sea); the largest hydroelectric dam (the massive Three Gorges project); and the highest railroad (an engineering marvel that crosses the Tibetan permafrost almost 5,000 meters above sea level).

U.S. buildings used to vie with each other for tallest. Now we barely make the global lists. The Sears Tower, antenna included, is a mere 1,730 feet tall. Dubai’s tallest building under construction is already 2,064 feet in the air and headed to 2,625 feet.

And current records will likely be seriously trumped (but not Trumped) before long. Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal plans a mile-high skyscraper along the Red Sea.

While we’re at it: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is building what might be the world’s costliest home, a $2 billion, 550-foot-tall mansion (Mansion? Is that the word for something like this?) with a heliport on top. Maybe Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man, can reclaim this title for the U.S. someday. He’s certainly been saving up. For five decades, Buffett has lived in the same 10-room house in Omaha. Just think what a view of Nebraska he could get from, say, a couple miles up…

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