Update: The five finalists for the 2015 Mies van der Rohe Award will be announced on February 25 at 12 UTC. 40 projects from 17 European countries have been shortlisted for the 2015 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Chosen from the 420 original nominees, five of the shortlisted projects will be chosen for the next round of selection, to be announced at the end of February in London. These selected architects will then present their projects before a committee on May 7, who will select one recipient of the highly esteemed international design award, as well as one recipient of the Emerging Architect Prize. The winners will be announced the following day at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.

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The Boston Society of Architects (BSA) has announced the 2014 winners of its Design Awards. The BSA Design Awards are allocated annually at the BSA Design Awards Gala, and concentrate on design excellence throughout New England. Each award recognizes projects that excel both aesthetically and technically, making a positive impact in the field of architecture.

Read on after the break to see the honor award winners in each category.

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The Flamengo landfill in Rio de Janeiro was recently host the world's largest urban art GIF. Created by anonymous artist INSA, the work consisted of a huge floor painting that underwent minor changes recorded by the satellite 430 miles above the earth.

Sponsored by Scotch whiskey brand Ballantine, the painting - 619,000-square-feet of yellow and pink hearts - was produced by a 20-person team over the course of four days. With each new picture, the team altered the illustration so that, by the end of the process, the recorded images created an animated GIF (as seen above).

Daydreaming about a trip to Copenhagen? Now is your chance to go. As part of BIG’s HOT TO COLD exhibition on view at the National Building Museum, Visit Denmark is hosting a sweepstakes for two to see the architectural and cultural sights of Denmark’s capital. All you need to do is watch the video above, find out which seaside museum Bjarke Ingels believes to be one of the world’s greatest (hint: take a look after the break), and enter your answer here (click "Win a trip to Copenhagen!"). Only US residents are eligible.

To many, the harsh turns the modern city has taken are not apparent. We see benches and bus stops that masquerade as shelters, but Guardian writer Alex Andreou's sudden plunge into homelessness opened his eyes to the hostile realities of these and other structures. In "Anti-Homeless spikes: 'Sleeping rough opened my eyes to the city's barbed cruelty'," he sheds some light on misconceptions about homelessness and explains the unfortunate trend of designing unlivable architecture to deter those affected.

This year the AA Athens Visiting School aims to challenge the phenomenon of perceptual constancy through the design of architectural prototypical families. In line with the basic Gestalt principles, a variety of models of different shapes and sizes will be designed through means of digital computation. Various morphologies will be derived through a bottom-up approach via various coding techniques. To bridge the gap between the digital and physical aspect of the design iterations, AA Athens will make use of digital fabricating machines to produce architectural prototypes and add mechanics to amplify their communicative characteristics. A complete 1:1 scale structure will be constructed, enabling interaction via sight, hearing and touch as a result of a series of initial testing models. These proposals will be formulated through the combination of different design software.

With almost half of the world’s wealth owned by 1% of the population, the spatial and physical effects of this inequality are becoming more pronounced in the world’s cities, and mitigating this polarization of society is an increasingly pressing issue. A new project led by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, in collaboration with Architects without Borders and Emergency Architecture & Human Rights.DK, is addressing this issue in Chile, with a development project proposal for Santiago’s largest unofficial settlement.

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Arup have released a new image of the proposed copper-nickel alloy cladding that will adorn Heatherwick Studio's Garden Bridge in London. According to a report by the Architects' Journal, the "concrete structure will be coated in 'cupro-nickel', from its feet on the riverbed up to the base of the balustrades on the bridge deck." The copper will be donated from Glencore, a multi-national mining company, forming "a protective skin to the carbon steel structure giving it a maintenance free 120-year life, protecting the bridge from river and environmental corrosion." More than 240 tonnes of the metal alloy, which often finds use in medical equipment and ship propellers, will be used.

Each year Winnipeg’s Red River Mutual Rivertrail is transformed by a series of site specific "Warming Huts" that bring life and refuge to what is the world's longest naturally frozen skating trail. The annual tradition’s popularity has grown exponentially, attracting participation from firm’s worldwide. This edition is offering visitors a highly acclaimed pop-up restaurant, a ski-through museum, and an eclectic collection of warm shelters, including a “hybrid” wood hut designed by Mexico’s Rojkind Arquitectos. You can see all eight completed installations, after the break.

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Montreal-based practice Provencher_Roy has been selected to receive the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s (RAIC) 2015 Architectural Firm Award. Chosen for their consistent, high quality work that spans 32 years, the 150-person firm was also praised by the jury for their dedication to mentorship.

“Provencher_Roy was chosen for the breadth and consistently high quality of work over many years,” said the five-member jury. “They have worked with a broad range of clients and project types. The firm is recognized for its collaborative work and the excellence of its working and peer-learning environment.”

The search for the winning projects for the 2015 World Architecture Festival (WAF) awards has already begun and now is the time to submit your best projects for consideration. WAF is the world’s largest architectural festival and awards event, annually recognizing exceptional architecture projects from around the globe.

Projects are considered across 30 categories and every entry will be listed on WAF’s global architecture archive, worldbuildingsdirectory.com. If selected as a finalist, you will be invited to the WAF festival in November at Singapore’s Suntec Convention & Exhibition Centre to present your project in front of the WAF jury, which includes Kerry Hill, Sir Peter Cook, Sou Fujimoto, Benedetta Tagliabue, Charles Jencks, and Manuelle Gautrand.

This year WAF will be held from November 4-6. The festival features three days of conferences, exhibitions and lectures, during which the awards ceremony will take place. Last year’s theme was “Architects and the City” and featured Rocco Yim and Moshe Safdie as keynote speakers.

In partnership with VS Furniture, Los Angeles-based Studio Jantzen have released images and concept material of their reconceptualization of the mobile classroom.

"A Kit of Parts" addresses what Studio Jantzen identifies as the four main shortcomings of mobile classrooms currently on the market: flexibility, sustainability, cost effectiveness, and creative construction. Read more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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In its 62^nd year of competition, six projects emerged to receive ARCHITECT Magazine's Progressive Architects Awards (P/A). This year’s awards celebrate designs that fully embrace the context of their surroundings, whether through bold or restrained methods. Regardless of the approach, each of the winners exhibit both creativity and energy in their designs.

The winning projects are... 

After nine consecutive months of growth, January’s Architecture Billing Index (ABI) reported a “softening” in US design activity. According to the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the January ABI score was 49.9, down from a mark of 52.7 in December. This score reflects a “very modest decrease” in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 58.7, down from the reading of 59.1 the previous month.

“This easing in demand for design services is a bit of a surprise given the overall strength of the market over the past nine months,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “Likely some of this can be attributed to severe weather conditions in January. We will have a better sense if there is a reason for more serious concern over the next couple of months.”

A breakdown of regional highlights, after the break.

Make It Right, the organization formed by Brad Pitt that builds affordable and sustainable houses for people in need, has released a series of new single-family home designs by local architects to expand their efforts in Kansas City, Missouri. The new homes will become part of Make it Right's established work in Manheim Park, complementing the affordable housing and community complex opened by the organization in 2013.

View the designs, after the break.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has awarded unconditional RIBA Part 1 accreditation to the undergraduate program at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, making it the first Chinese architecture program to be certified by the UK architecture body. The accreditation marks another first for XJTLU's partner university at Liverpool, which pioneered the RIBA accreditation system by becoming the first certified course in the world in 1906, and officially marks the program at XJTLU as on a par with other architecture schools around the world.