Set in urban Los Angeles over a calculated spot along the 101 Freeway, an audacious freeway overpass has been designed to reduce deaths among mountain lions, pumas and other wild species populating the area. While such wildlife corridors exist in various forms around the world, this would be the biggest of its kind in North America at 165 by 200 feet, and perhaps the largest urban example on the planet.

The crossing is set to connect two areas of protected public land, in the Santa Monica Mountains to the south and the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, stitching a fragmented habitat back together. Covered in native greenery, it would provide a safe passage for animals across the busy freeway below and could double as a crossing for hikers and mountain bikers as well.

Backed by local politicians and wildlife protection organizations, the corridor project was vetted for feasibility by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and is set to be funded with public money. It is intended primarily to protect animals, but also benefits motorists who can also be harmed in wildlife-related accidents.

There are smaller-scale precedents around the US and the globe, variously set above or below roads help animals both large and small. Some are larger, including tunnels or bridges for bears, cougars, deer, elk but others are smaller and species-specific, like the above aerial trellis for mice and squirrels in Australia. In some cases, as with a certain species of crab (below, also: Down Under), the crossings are essential to maintaining balanced ecosystems and supporting local economies.

Many of these kinds of structures can be found in more rural states around the country, while very few bridge metropolitan highways. “I don’t know anywhere where people have tried to put such a large wildlife crossing over such a busy highway in such an urban landscape,” said Seth Riley, a wildlife ecologist with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service (additional images via Wikipedia).

In many cities, freeways cut through the heart of urban centers like fresh wounds faded to old scars, but what if there were a way to reintegrate the disparate sides across the divide?

The Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded first place to a particularly daring solution to this problem, one that proposes inhabitable fitness infrastructure to close the gap.

Designed by Chadbourne & Doss, the scheme calls for cycling and running tracks, climbing walls, swimming pools and skate parks, all set to hover over the roadways below.

Each section allows for existing traffic flows, working in and around them while mixing new programmatic layers into their midst.

The idea is to use these activities to join both sides but also simultaneously provide a series of iconic structures visible to (hopefully just the passengers of) fast-passing cars on the freeway as well.

The shape of each, being uniquely suited to its purpose, creates a sequence of distinctly different architectural forms experienced in succession.

There is no computer-generated imagery behind this surreal-seeming scenography, but rather a skillful remixing of reality to sort actual automobiles by color.

Artist and filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaker explains that his “aim is to reveal the color palette and color preferences of contemporary San Diego drivers in addition to traffic patterns and volumes. There are no CG elements, these are all real cars that have been removed from one sample and reorganized.”

Sure enough, the dominant colors are actually revealed to be anything but colorful – vehicles are mainly white, gray or black, with some reds and blues then very few oranges or yellows. Both lanes below and the overpass ahead are integrated into the artificial choreography.

Shot in San Diego and reorganized in post-production, the seamless transitions in this film serve to make the piece simultaneously more realistic and implausible. Just imagine your reaction  if you saw something like this actually unfolding on the highway before you.

In a similar previous project, Kuckenbaker captured a series of landings at the San Deigo airport and then overlaid the results of hours of filming. The sky was effectively green-screened so that the planes could be overlapped in front of a seemingly-consistent background.

With prototypes set to hit the pavement in the Netherlands next year, these interactive  interventions take innovation back from a focus on the car and put it right on the road.

Examples include: glow-in-the-dark paints that recharge by day and illuminate by night, wind-driven roadside lamps, energy-saving motion-sensor lights, temperature- and moisture-sensitive weather- and road-condition displays with color-changing paint to warn of icing, and even dedicated induction-priority lanes to magnetically recharge electric cars.

The Dutch Design Award-winning team behind these designs comes from Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure. Their work spans green technologies and safety measures that will merge with real-life lanes, providing useful feedback and assistance to drivers.

“It’s about safety, creating awareness but also making roads energy-neutral in terms of lighting … and most of all: creating the experience of an icon, the Route 66 of the future.” While we may eventually see a future where cars drive themselves, for now we live in a world where high speeds bring real dangers, and invention has not matched the acceleration of actual drivers. Time and experiments will tell how well these ideas actually work when applied to asphalt.