Architecture future: How buildings will begin to make our lives better

We'll always need buildings, so long as the wind blows and the temperature drops, but the virtual reality of contemporary life has changed our relationship to physical space. Buildings, particularly in the public realm, aren't as essential as they used to be.

How important is a convention center in the age of webinars? Schools, libraries and workplaces when information is so easy to share digitally? Airports and hotels when friends connect via Facebook and FaceTime?

Architects have felt the pressure and sweated the possibility that their once-enviable profession is headed toward irrelevancy. We'll always need them, too, but how much depends on what they can bring to the table beyond four sturdy walls and a roof.

The good news is that the profession is changing. Slowly, and with some good ideas leading the way, architects, planners and designers have begun moving from defense to offense, creating spaces that do more than protect us from the elements. The best new buildings actually make us healthier by encouraging exercise and better diet. They improve our energy levels and attitudes by balancing our exposure to light and sound. Well-designed public places strengthen communities by drawing users from across social and economic divides to shared experiences.

Architecture's next step is to build on the green movement that has made structures more energy-efficient and earth-friendly and to develop spaces that work as doctors, coaches and counselors for 21st-century life.

At Canal Park in Washington, D.C., an interactive water fountain becomes an ice rink in the winter. The park's storm-water management system recycles runoff from neighboring buildings, saving 1.5 million gallons of potable water each year. (Photo provided by Land Collective)

Mariposa, a Denver Housing Authority development that has been opening in phases, combines several of these ideas into one residential mini-city. Planners are designing the block apartment buildings with ample community garden spaces where residents can grow their own food, and integrating colorful playgrounds into the front yards. The units go for varying rents from highly subsidized to market rate so every building and floor has a mix of occupants. Located near an affordable commuter rail line in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, the development makes walking a few blocks to the train each morning more attractive than walking a few steps to the car.

Mariposa's biggest contribution to the movement may be the Mariposa Stair, a brilliant multimedia art installation that inspires residents in one new building to skip the elevators altogether. As the stair rises four floors, a Mayan folktale called "The Chocolate Tree" unfolds in chapters. Climbers can read about the plants and animals in the story's jungle setting and push buttons to hear bird calls and thunderstorms. A chandelier it's not lavish, just plastic panels and LED lights strung together with cables hangs down the center, illuminating the space in gentle red, blue and green hues.

The stair, designed by Rezan Prananta and a team from the Denver architecture firm Shears Adkins Rockmore, has a pleasant vibe and, so far, people are using it.

This holistic attitude is architecture's greatest promise and seems to be steering trends. More and more, landscape architects a subset of the profession that used to enter building ventures late in the planning to finish parking lots and lawns are emerging as project leaders, devising how sites will be organized, used and maintained. These days, they might be the ones to hire building architects to complete their vision.

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Architecture future: How buildings will begin to make our lives better