Colorado’s I-70 corridor cuts across an important landscape in the Southern Rocky Mountains. While essential for human movement, the highway creates a substantial barrier for wildlife moving between habitats.

The ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition challenged teams to reconsider that relationship and imagine infrastructure capable of supporting ecological continuity alongside transportation.

The winning proposal, hypar-nature, was led by Rock while at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in collaboration with HNTB. Its central idea reversed the conventional starting point: rather than designing a bridge for people and adapting it for animals, the landscape itself would guide the design.

Forest, meadow, shrubland, and rocky slope habitat types were extended across the structure so animals would encounter the crossing as a continuation of the surrounding terrain.

A modular system of precast concrete forms was developed to reduce disturbance during construction while allowing the structure to expand or adapt to different landscapes and wildlife pressures.

That flexibility allowed the proposal to function as more than a solution for one location. It became a prototype for how wildlife crossings might be approached at a larger regional scale.