"An alpine town, the Eiffel Tower, the whole Manhattan skyline… China is replicating the world's architectural gems. (...) The issue of China and its attitude to intellectual property rights has now been reignited, following claims that a project in Beijing by Zaha Hadid is ­being replicated by "pirate ­architects" in Chongqing, the megacity in the south. It could even be finished ­before the original is completed next year. The British architect's globular ­complex of pebble-shaped towers – an office and retail development called Wangjing Soho – is itself something of a copy of her recently completed Galaxy Soho, also in Beijing, and both projects are in keeping with the city's new vernacular of bulbous UFOs, kicked off in 2007 by Paul Andreu's ­National Grand Theatre. (...) It also launched an advertising slogan in response to the furore: "Never meant to copy, only want to surpass." - Amira

"In many copycat cases, though, the architects are either long gone or ­impossible to name. In ­Tianducheng, near Shanghai, a 108m-high Eiffel Tower rises above Champs Elysées Square; while in Chengdu, to the south-west, a residential complex for 200,000 recreates Britain's Dorchester. The ­attention to detail can be ­astonishing: a ­doppelganger Queen's Guard ­patrols Shanghai's Thames Town, which abounds with statues of Winston Churchill; gleaming ­replicas of the White House dot ­Chinese cities. It all adds up to a surreal ­catalogue of ­"duplitecture", brilliantly ­documented in the book Original ­Copies: ­Architectural Mimicry in ­Contemporary China by Bianca Bosker." - Amira

See also: China spends $940 million to clone one of Austria's most picturesque villages http://friendfeed.com/world-p... - Amira