Best known for his vivid geometric murals full of fantastical animals, which brighten up everything from derelict churches to fleets of freighters, street artist Okuda San Miguel has crafted a massive 3D sculptural centerpiece for the annual Fallas celebration in Valencia, Spain. The 100-foot-tall cardboard sculpture stood for just four days before it was ritualistically burned, along with the rest of the art created for the festival, in a celebration of ephemeral human achievements.

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The festival, honoring Saint Joseph, sees three million visitors descend upon a city of one million to dance, celebrate the beginning of Spring, drink sangria in the streets and watch a bunch of things burn. Among the sculptural ‘sacrifices’ are traditionally a series of giant ‘ninots’ (puppets or dolls) including satirical figures. This year, it was Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Just before midnight on ‘La Crema,’ the last day of the festival, the crowds begin changing and the streetlights are turned off before fireworks explode and everything is set ablaze.

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Asked by El Periodico before the festival whether he was ready to see the piece burn, Okuda said, “No I’m not. I think I’m going to have a sentimental craze, because it’s the most amazing piece I’ve done in 3D and I’m freaking out with every piece that comes out. I’m going to cry. With the cool thing that we have built, I’m sure I will not understand very well that it’s going to burn, but I think the millions of people who are around this and who have such a strong feeling will make me understand.”

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“This is one of the great traditional festivals of Spain because, to start, it’s art, it’s not just bulls running and I do not know what. Fallas are constructions that artisans make for a year and with a history of more than a century. I find it incredible.”

Literally popping out of city walls in three dimensions, wild animals emerge from a jumble of car parts, corrugated metal and random industrial objects masterfully layered and painted by Bordalo II. The Portuguese street artist has spent much of the last decade installing these giant murals in the streets of his hometown of Lisbon and other locales around the world, literally infusing new life into the stuff we’ve deemed junk and tossed away. Several new pieces have emerged in recent months, including a possum in Ft. Smith, Arkansas and a flying squirrel in Estonia.

Each of Bordalo’s sculptures grows in an almost organic fashion depending on what kind of trash the artist can find on the streets near his installation location. As you can probably imagine, he has no trouble accumulating more materials than he can handle just with a quick trip driving around a few city blocks. Certain materials, like tires, are preferred because they’re easy to cut and shape.

Like so many street artists, Bordalo started out making illegal street graffiti, and his style emerged over time as he began to integrate 3D objects into the paint. “Even if in the beginning it was all about exploring and discovering the way to do, the way to make it work, I’m still trying to innovate, create new problems and have fun with them – this is the process that creates different expressions, forms, textures, etc.,” he says in an interview with Street Art News.

Take a look through Bordalo’s Instagram for more projects, and see if you can identify all the individual elements that go into each piece.

A wall with a texture reminiscent of a cross-stitch cloth, a rusted shopping cart half-submerged in a river, curbside trash finds and utility boxes all transform into interactive 3D elements of engaging street art pieces by Ernest ‘Zach’ Zacharevic. The Lithuanian-born artist not only takes the surfaces and immediate surroundings into account when planning each mural, but also reflects the culture of the setting for totally unique, spontaneous and yet targeted infusions of color, humor and fun into the urban landscape.

Zacharevic assesses each location ahead of time, often getting inspiration from the elements already present before prepping as much of each piece as possible in his studio to cut down on outdoor painting time. Components like junked bicycles, busted chairs and peeling wheelbarrows are bolted or glued to the walls so they become an active part of the work – though many of these three-dimensional elements are already part of the urban fabric, and the artist simply integrates them.

Gestural swipes of dripping spray paint contrast with Zacharevic’s painterly style, contrasting textures and making each mural look like it popped off a gallery canvas to become a part of the larger world. In an interview with DesignBoom, the artist notes that some of these dynamic qualities originate in a fascination with animation and “its ability to bend reality and bring images to life.”

“I see my work more like a simple moment capturing everyday life rather than an elaborate narrative,” he says. “This seems to work best with the subject of childhood nostalgia, a subject which features often in my work.”

The ugly banality of a worn beige electrical box in a Lisbon plaza seems to give way to colorful ceramic tiles hidden beneath, the paint cracking and peeling to reveal a glimpse traditional Portuguese patterns. Street artist Diogo Machado (known as Add Fuel) completed this optical illusion as part of the Trampolins Gerador project, which aims to revitalize the city through urban art, performance, music and other interventions.

The work is a continuation of Machado’s Ceramic series combining contemporary street art with Portuguese ‘azulejo,’ tile patterns that have been a part of the country’s history for centuries. The artist often collaborates with other street artists to fuse these decorative historic details with other styles, bringing them to the city streets in a new way.

Electrical boxes, substations, bathrooms and other less-than-aesthetically-pleasing elements found on city streets are generally eyesores, making them an ideal canvas for imaginative transformations.

Street artist EVOL turns them into tiny buildings, while Dutch designer Roeland Otten disguises them by blending them into their environments.

At first glance it looks as if thin layers of these walls have been slowly torn away in concentric shapes, leading deeper and deeper into the spaces on the other side. No longer clearly cinder block, brick or any other solid building material, the walls seem as if they really could consist of nothing more than stack after stack of thin paper in rainbow hues.

Germany-based street artist 1010 creates the effect with nothing more than spray paint, adding a third dimension to flat surfaces with clever use of color, shape and shadows. The works range from actual paper cuts that are framed for gallery walls to murals covering multiple stories of a building, like the installation created for contemporary art festival Knotempunkt in Hamburg.

Making small creations out of stacked paper likely give 1010 a chance to study the shapes and shadows that make his illusions so effective on a larger scale. “In this case painting a shadow does the trick,” the artist tells Hashimoto Contemporary Gallery. “I call them holes, abyss, passage or portals, names that leave enough space for interpretation and projection for the viewer.”