While Copenhagen has its Harbour Baths, Paris has its Plages on the Seine, and Basel hosts the annual Rhine Swim, the thought of wild swimming along London's waterways might be somewhat less appealing.

Not to Alex Smith and David Lomax of young design practice Y/N Studio, who have conceived a project to transform a stretch of the Regent's Canal into a swimmable commuting route.

The LidoLine would skirt the edge of London zoo, allowing you to swim alongside the bird house

"The canals used to be functional routes for industry, but now they've become purely recreational," says Smith. "We thought, why not turn the waterways back into something useful, connecting people with the places they work?"

The LidoLine would take the form of a clean "basin" inserted into the canal, allowing commuters to swim in safety alongside boats, separated by a three-layer membrane that would filter the water – a system currently being pioneered by the Plus Pool, a proposal for a public swimming pool in New York's Hudson river.

Key "stations" along the way would provide changing areas and lockers, while City Road Basin would host a large outdoor swimming area, surrounded by sunbathing decks. In winter months, laned-off areas could even be frozen and transformed into an ice-skating route.

In the winter months a thin gauze of material is inserted into the water, reducing its depth and allowing it to freeze, forming a new high-speed ice-skating link

"The really exciting bit would be the Islington tunnel," says Smith, referring to the 900m stretch where the canal burrows beneath the streets of Angel. "It could be filled with disco lights and take on a whole life of its own."

The station areas, meanwhile, could be transformed into lively public spaces by night, hosting outdoor cinema screenings and canalside events – of a kind similar to last summer's Folly for a Flyover project.

At key locations new lidos are formed allowing outdoor swimming competitions or recreational swimming

"We were inspired by watching the Olympic triathlon, seeing people swimming in the Serpentine," says Smith. "We were picturing a kind of James Bond businessman, swimming all the way to work in Canary Wharf."

The LidoLine came runner-up in an ideas competition organised by the Landscape Institute, in partnership with the mayor of London and Garden Museum, to dream up a version of New York's High Line park.

The overall winner was Pop Down by Fletcher Priest architects, which proposed to transform the disused Mail Rail tunnel under Oxford Street into an urban mushroom garden.

Would you swim to work? Or might you pop underground to dine in the ethereal gloom of a "funghi restaurant"? What other redundant bits of London's infrastructure could be transformed into functional and recreational routes?