The Living Building Challenge will now fulfill the energy and water requirements for LEED. As the U.S. Green Building Council announced, this marks an important step in the USGBC's mission to make LEED an accessible platform that complements other construction rating systems.

The USGBC's decision essentially equates the two systems in the fields of water and energy efficiency, recognizing projects that meet the Living Building Challenge's standards within these areas as equivalent to LEED standards. By doing so, it encourages a spirit of collaboration toward sustainable goals across competing rating systems.

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has awarded two British Columbia projects with the 2015 Innovation in Architecture award for their use of wood and steel: Michael Green Architecture's Wood Innovation Design Center in Prince George has been deemed to be an exemplar for tall timber buildings, while Patkau Architects' origami-inspired One Fold research project illustrates the structural potential of folding steel sheets. A closer look at both projects, after the break.

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From James Gulliver Hancock, author and illustrator of the All the Buildings in New York book and blog, comes All the Buildings in Sydney, a vibrant guide to Hancock's home town.

Packed full of idiosyncratically meticulous and colorful illustrations, the book provides a whimsical account of Sydney's architecture and history. From icons such as Utzon's Sydney Opera House to lesser known gems like Mark Foy's building opposite Hyde Park, to the terrace houses of inner city suburbs, All the Buildings in Sydney presents each building with care, detail, and an abundance of charm.

See more images from All the Buildings in Sydney, after the break…

A total of sixteen projects have been shortlisted for RIBA East 2015 Awards, featuring buildings by Hawkins\Brown, Proctor & Matthews, Allies & Morrison, and AHMM. All shortlisted buildings will now be assessed by a regional jury. Regional winners will then be considered for a RIBA National Award in recognition of their architectural excellence, the results of which will place some projects in the running for the 2015 RIBA Stirling Prize.

See the complete list of shortlisted projects after the break.

If approved, Robert A.M. Stern will build London's most expensive flats. Aiming to replace a 1960s car park and a number of other buildings in city's Mayfair district, the £2 billion "Audley Square House" apartment block is being commissioned by Phones4U billionaire John Caudwell.

As BD Online reports, Caudwell abandoned an already approved £300 million Foster + Partners scheme in favor of Stern's neo-classical design, saying he chose the New York-based architect for his "ability to design high-quality buildings that do not stand apart from their surroundings but rather fit in comfortably amongst their neighbors.”

Wolfgang Buttress' “pulsating” beehive is one of the first pavilions to complete for the 2015 Milan Expo. Serving as the UK's contribution, “BE,” the “virtual hive” is designed to highlight the plight of the honeybee and offer an “immersive sensory experience” that leaves visitors with a “lasting flavor of the British landscape.”

Comprised of a 14-meter lattice structure, made from 169,300 pieces of aluminum and steel, the domed structure sits at the end of a meandering wildflower meadow that leads visitors to the "hive." Once inside, a sensory composition of audio and visual effects will mimic the activity of an existing beehive in Nottingham. 

A look inside the beehive, after the break. 

C.F. Møller has unveiled designs for Denmark's largest sewage pumping station. Planned to be built on Copenhagen's Kløvermarken, the new building will serve as an independent counterpart to the site's historic 1901 pumping station, originally designed by city architect Ludvig Fenger.

According to the architects, the brick station aims to "set new standards for large-scale sustainable utilities in Danish cities," while "closely integrating itself into the dense urban context." It will be built as a circular structure - the optimal shape of an underground pumping well - and feature two rainwater harvesting green roofs, a distinctive set of 24 meter-tall pressure towers, and two recreational "gardens" for employees. 

Since the building's construction concluded in 2012, images of OMA's CCTV Headquarters have permeated the media. But inside views of this mutant skyscraper -- characterized by a soaring 72 meter cantilever -- have remained rare. Until now, that is. Images originally published by International Design and shared on WeChat by 广电独家 reveal the interior of OMA's CCTV Headquarters, including Emmy-winning set designer Jim Fenhagen's news studios.

Take a peek inside the meeting rooms, hallways and control centers of CTBUH's 2013 Best Tall Building Worldwide.

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The great schools of architecture have been around since time immemorial, or at least that's how it can often feel. In London, a city particularly dense with institutions of this calibre, this is perhaps felt more acutely. How, then, do you develop an entirely new school in this tightly packed environment which has the potency and capacity to compete? Will Hunter, former executive editor of the London-based Architectural Review, began a process to do just this with an article in 2012. Following this, he set up the ARFA—Alternative Routes For Architecture—in order to explore different models for architectural education, calling upon professionals and academics to contribute to a series of informal discussions.

“When the tuition fees in the UK escalated to around £9000 per year in 2013, it got me thinking about different models for architectural education,” Hunter recalls. The casual meetings held around this time gradually become more serious until, “at a certain point, we decided to test them: to make a school.” The project gathered momentum from that point on and now, two years later, the London School of Architecture (LSA) are preparing to take in their first ‘trailblazing cohort’ of postgraduate students.

KPMB Architects, West 8 and Greenberg Consultants have been announced as winners of a competition to revitalize Toronto's Jack Layton Ferry Terminal and Harbor Square Park. The winning proposal, "Harbour Landing" envisions a terminal embedded within the surrounding park and topped with a lush public green space that expands the waterfront park.

"The vision for the area will result in a welcoming gateway to the Toronto Islands – one of the City's most unique and cherished parks – with amenities and infrastructure to support the approximately 1.3 million visitors who use the ferry each year," said competition organizers, Waterfront Toronto and the City of Toronto in a press release.

The Washington DC International Spy Museum is seeking permission to relocate to a new $100 million building designed by Richard Rogers at L’Enfant Plaza. Contingent on approval from the Commission of Fine Arts, as the Washington Business Journal reports, the new 100,000-square-foot, six-story proposed museum would be sited on an open area adjacent to the L'Enfant Plaza hotel.

“I think everyone in the city knows that’s somewhat of a dead area right now,” said Spy Museum Chief Operating Officer Tamara Christian to WBJ. “When we came to Penn Quarter, it was somewhat of a dead area. Now it’s completely energized, and we’re really hoping that we’ll be able to be a catalyst to energize L’Enfant.”

Zaha Hadid, Fernando Romero, and Ben Van Berkel are making headlines alongside two renowned artists for their 3D printed reinventions of the high heel. A collaborative vision spearheaded by United Nude and 3D Systems, the highly anticipated project was unveiled yesterday at the "Re-Inventing Shoes" exhibition at Milan Design Week.

Each sculptural heel was 3D printed using SelectiveLaser Sintering in a hard Nylon and all-new soft Rubber material, making a "fully functioning" shoe. Only up to 50 pairs of each will be sold. See them all, after the break. 

For more than 150 years, the Golden Ratio has been one of the main tenets of design, informing generations of architects, designers, and artists. From Le Corbusier to Apple, Vitruvius to Da Vinci, the ratio purportedly dictates which forms will be found aesthetically pleasing. Yet mathematicians and designers have grown skeptical of the practical applications of the Golden Ratio, with Edmund Harriss of the University of Arkansas' mathematics department putting it at its most simple: "It is certainly not the universal formula behind aesthetic beauty." Writing for Fast Co. Design, John Brownlee collates sources as diverse as the mathematics department at Stanford University to Richard Meier, laying out the case against what may just be design's greatest hoax. Read the full article here.

SANAA and Snøhetta have been jointly awarded first prize in a restricted competition to build a "New National Gallery - Ludwig Museum" in Budapest's 200-year-old Városliget (City Park). Lauded for their "equally outstanding" proposals, the winning teams will now meet with the jury to be judged "on professional and financial considerations."

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos and the joint proposal of Balázs Mihály's Architect Studio and the Faculty of Architecture of Budapest University of Technology and Economics were awarded second prize.

The competition is part of a larger cultural project that aims to renew the city's Városliget by 2018 with five new museum buildings built inside the expanded park area.

A closer look at the winning schemes, after the break. 

After deliberating over eight shortlisted proposals to reimagine the St. Petersburg Pier, the Pier Selection Committee has narrowed the competition down to three designs. Though the proposals vary widely in aesthetics, the finalists all approached the project as an opportunity to express the past while embracing modern forms and incorporating strong public programs.

Next on the agenda, the Pier Selection Committee will conduct an initial public meeting on April 23 in which finalists will present clarifications on their designs, followed later that day with a second meeting to announce the teams' rankings. Based on these proceedings, one design will be chosen for further development, in collaboration with the city. Check out the three finalists, after the break.

Yong ho Shin and John Randle of shindesignworks have been announced as the winners of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," a design competition held earlier this year as part of the Yeats2015 festival. Based in London and Daegu, South Korea, the pair of architects proposed "Square Moon," a light-based installation for the Irish Island about which Yeats wrote his eponymous1892 poem, and from which the competition took its name.