is Rem Koolhaas, of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, planning to build a a gargantuan 44-storey replica of the Death Star as a corner-piece for his planned city in Dubai?

According to his office, the enormous sphere will be part of a masterplan for his concept of "the generic city", which has been described by the New York Times as a "sprawling metropolis of repetitive buildings centered on an airport and inhabited by a tribe of global nomads with few local loyalties

The building will act as a symbol for a 1.5bn-square-foot "global city

promises to be home to 1.5 million inhabitants

The sphere itself, with a telltale circular recess that looks like its been taken from George Lucas's drawing board, is conceived as a self-contained three-dimensional urban neighbourhood and will encase various public institutions in a series of smaller spheres suspended on the inside