Portfolio Luis Efrain Salinas 2023

Luis Efrain Salinas

Education

luisefrainsalinas@gmail.com

(956)878-3867

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture |M.S. Advanced Architectural Design Program 2023

Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture | Bachelor of Architecture GPA 3.5 2022 Minor in Art

Science Academy, South Texas ISD, Mercedes, TX | High School GPA 3.7 2017

Distinguished Plan

Endorsements: STEM, Arts and Humanities, Multidisciplinary AP Scholar: World History, Spanish and Literature, English III

Clubs

Member| CCNY Green

Member| AIAS

Member| NOMAS

Publications and Awards

Dean’s List 2020

The City College of New York Spring Semester

CityWorks 2022

Bernard and Anne Spitzer School Archives

Independent Studio on Contemporary Film Analysis

Architect’s Newspaper 2022

WAI Architecture Think Tank’s Studio at Columbia GSAPP explored postcolonial conditions through narrative means

Experience

MattBox Library 2022

Bernard and Anne Spitzer School

Installation and design of glass materials display in Material Library for students

The Struggle for Freedom in La Española 2021

Electronic Design & Multimedia | The City College of New York

Character design and animation work for the 500th anniversary of the First African Revolt in the Americas for the Dominican Studies Institute

San Isidro Multi Services Inc, Hidalgo TX

2014-Current Treasurer

Experienced with office work such as filing Currency Transaction Reports, quarterly costs reports, and audit reports. Have been in charge of management of payroll and payments. Also have experience with the balance of the checkbook, business computer system, and bank statements.

Skills

Software:

Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Premier, Rhino, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, Vray, 3dsArc GIS, Excel, Revit

Skills:

Photography, Stopmotion Animation, Video/Sound Editing, Drafting, Hand Graphics, Model Making, Woodshop, Digital Illustration, Watecolor

Languages: English, Spanish

Table of Contents

4 The Shape of Water: Harlem Aquatic Center

Spring 2020 | Professor Henry Grosman | In Collaboration with Caroline Ho

10 Space Time Movement

Spring 2022 | Professor Viren Brahmbhatt

14 The Struggle for Freedom in La Española

Fall 2021| Professor Art Jones and Professor Krisia M Ayala Ortiz

Character Team: Tian Herrshaft, Kamilla Razhabova, Mafe Torro, Luis Efrain Salinas

16

Montage of Attractions: Lyubov Popova

Fall 2022| Professor Steven Holl and Professor Dimitra Tsachrelia

20

Reenvisioning the Micheal C. Rockefeller Wing

Summer 2022 | Professor Cruz Garcia and Professor Nathalie Frankowski

26 Assembly: Bathroom Kitchen Stairs

Fall 2019 | Professor Fran Leadon

32 After Lights: Passage to Opacity

Fall 2022 | Professor Mario Gooden | In Collaboration with Karen Wang

The Shape of Water: Harlem Aquatic Center

Core Studio Spring 2020 (CCNY)

Professor Henry Grossman

In Collaboration with Caroline Ho

The project aimed to design an aquatics center on Park Ave between 119th and 120th streets. Throughout the project, the driving force that informed design decisions was the concept of blurriness. Blurriness is defined as a phenomenon where the viewer cannot comprehend the entirety of the form from any given point.

Blurriness is achieved by the converging curves of the main structural element and the striation of minor structural elements that connect them. This striation creates a Moiré effect throughout the building in its rails, ramps, and fire stair enclosure. The system between striation and curve is present throughout the building creating one unified experience.

This concept was informed by developing models to produce an effect and follow a system. These early models and their variation on a theme produced the final form of the building.

Floors Render

Exterior Render

Pool Renders

Basement Render Mezzanine Render

Space Time Movement: Contemporary Film and Architecture

Independent Studio Spring 2022 (CCNY)

Professor Viren Brahmbhatt

Film can be broken down into three essential components: Time, Space, and Movement. While shared in architecture and film, these three fundamental components differ in their use in these mediums. While Space is captured through shots that contain a sense of time and movement within them in cinema, architecture has one experience of time and movement while being enveloped in Space. Cinema provides a clear vision of time and movement while giving warped and composed Space frames. For these reasons, Architecture can learn from the cinematic experience while the creation of cinematic Space can be expanded on through architectural design.

While Film has limitless freedom to connect these factors using montage no matter their distance, Architecture must bridge these together into a singular vision. The experiential quality of Architecture lends itself to similar concepts, such as the sequence in which action, movement, and event are practiced. Although Film can close the distance between Space and Time, it is still tied to being experienced in a flat plane. On the other hand, architecture is free spatially but can not close this distance outside of itself. For this reason, although Cinema and Architecture share many of the same qualities, the way the audience and visitors experience them differs significantly. The project seeks to break down the components of Film that begin to create visual, experiential, and spatial narratives.

Camera Movement, Camera Placement, and Actor Movement

I II III IV V

A B C D E 1 2 3 4 5

X Axis (Pan)

I- 180 Degree (Left)

II- 135 Degree

III- 90 Degree (Straight On)

IV- 45 Degree

V- 0 Degree (Right)

Y Axis (Tilt)

A- Bird’s Eye View

B- Down Shot

C- Straight On

D- Up Shot

E- Worm’s Eye View

Z Axis (Distance)

1- Long Far

2- Full Body

3- Medium Shot

4- Close Up

5- Extreme Close Up

Movement

Red- Composition Change

Pink- Camera Movement

Dark Blue- Ryan Gosling

Light Blue- Emma Stone

0:13:20

The Sequence shows hard versus soft cuts such as diegetic wipes. Hard cuts between shots are shown as a thick vertical line between them. Softer cuts have no dividing line as they flow seamlessly into each other. These transitions and the character’s movements create a disorienting sequence. One example would be the break of the 180 rule (third and fourth shot in the second row) where Mima runs in one direction, but the follow-up shot has her facing the other direction.

Distance

A- Close Up

B- Medium Shot

C- Full Body

D- Long Far

Movement and Transition

Vertical Thick Blue Line- Hard Cut

Vertical Thin Blue Line- Soft Cut

Red Arrow- Mima’s Movement

Pink Arrow- Idol Mima’s Movement

0:09:18

The opening car chase from Drive provides a view into time distortion through the shot duration. The colors in the background of the diagram depict different states of movement. The light blue color shows moments when the car is parked. The darker purple represents moments where the driver is going at the speed limit. The red signifies when he is being pursued. The three colors are overlaid with lines showing the moments there is a cut in the sequence. The moments with the quickest cuts are those with the driver being chased. Longer shots seem drawn out, while quick cuts make the action faster.

Blue- Parked

Purple- Speed Limit

Red- Pursued

Vertical Line- Cut

Drive (2011)

Perfect Blue (1997)

Row (Tilt)

Column (Distance)

1- Close Up

2- Medium Shot

3- Full Body Shot

The arrival and departure scenes go through many exact locations but at vastly different points in the plot. In the arrival scene, Ki Woo constantly moves up elevation toward the house. The angle comes into play in the initial shots of the wealthy family’s house. The house is shot with an upshot making the building seem immense. In contrast, the departure scene uses a lot more down shots to highlight the scale of the environment in comparison to the family. In this way, angle and distance play a vital role in framing a scene

Parasite (2019)

Departure Scene

Arrival Scene

A- Down Shot

B- Straight On

C- Up Shot

4- Long Far

The Struggle for Freedom in La Española

Visualizing Resistance Fall 2021 (CCNY)

Professor Krisia M Ayala Ortiz Professor Art Jones

Character Team: Tiana Herrshaft, Kamilla Razhabova and Mafe Torro

The Struggle for Freedom in La Española, Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the First African Revolt in the Americas, was created in collaboration with the Art Department program in Electronic Design & Multimedia at The City College of New York at CUNY.

Equipped with the essential historical details about the revolt, we were tasked with bringing the rebellion to life. I was part of the character and animation team working to develop the character designs and their implementation into the backgrounds. Then we worked on the animation of the characters in collaboration with the background team.

Character Sheet

Animation Cellls

Montage of Attractions

Lyubov Popova

Architecture Apropo Art Fall 2022 (GSAPP)

Professor Steven Holl

Professor Dimitra Tsachrelia

Although Popova was famous for her textiles and paintings, she also worked on various stage constructions from 1920-1923. The most notable was the set design for the Magnanimous Cuckold, which featured industrial components such as wheels and an air mill. Having worked in Vladimir Tatlin’s cooperative studio, The Tower, in 1912, she had experience with sculpture and relief. The wheels and air mill on the stage set would be operated manually, allowing for different speeds and directions. They were moved according to the action of the play. This is similar to The Monument to the Third International’s movement, where the three rooms spun at different speeds.

Sergei Eisenstein was a student of Popova in a stage construction class. Eisenstein’s theory of montage described how specific calculated movements, actions, or set pieces would affect the audience in specific ways. He called these attractions. Here the stage would rotate at a fast or slow speed, with the drama becoming an attraction. Popova’s stage designs were meant to bring the stage not as a background object but as an actor or attraction that participates in the play and in which the actors can inhabit fully. Eisenstein’s theory which he developed after being a stage and film director, correlates well with the stage design of Popova. The calculated manual operation of the stage would provide, as Eisenstein would describe, “ a series of calculated pressures (attractions) on the psyche.”

Monument to the Third International- Vladimir Tatlin 1920 Funeral of V.I. Lenin- Alexander Rodchenko 1924

Click for Stopmotion Short Film

Space-Force Construction- Lyubov Popova 1921-1922

Magnanimous Cuckold- Lyubov Popova 1922 Design for Stage Set of Zemia Dybom (Earth in Turmoil) -Lyubov Popova 1923

Click or Animations

Magnanimous Cuckold- Lyubov Popova 1922

“The first of these is, of course, theater, which is linked to cinema by a common (identical) basic material- the audience- and by a common purpose - influencing this audience in the desired direction through a series of calculated pressures (attractions) on the psyche.”

-Sergei Eisenstein 1924

Magnanimous Cuckold- Lyubov Popova 1922

Reenvisioning

the Micheal C. Rockefeller Wing

Advanced Studio Summer 2022 (GSAPP)

Professors Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski

The short film seeks to present the footprint of Nelson Rockefeller and the United States in Latin America while simultaneously capturing the trajectory of the Latin American objects in the Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum.

The footprint is shown through a visual narrative using collage and film techniques. The short film seeks to transition between the different mediums utilized by the CIAA through the use of found footage from propaganda films, radio broadcasts, interviews, and more. These found elements are then intertwined into the narrative and collages. The use of the “found image” is not only a visual means but an auditory one as well. This bombardment of visuals and audio displays the intensity with which the CIAA staff of 12,000 intervened in Latin America.

The story follows the trajectory of the Latin American collection from excavations and benefactors to Rockefeller’s private collections, to the Primitive Arts Museum, and finally to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Reenvisioning of the Micheal C Rockefeller Wing imagines the space after the repatriation of the artifacts has occurred, and the footprint both in terms of the CIAA and oil companies has been acknowledged.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rockefeller Estate Exterior

Nelson Rockefeller

Rockefeller began his private art collection in 1930. After a few visits to Latin America in 1937 and 1939, he developed an interest in Pre-Columbian art. With his influence beginning to be established in Latin America Nelson was asked to head the CIAA. He had a number of sources from which he acquired the artifacts. Meanwhile, Rockefeller directed the Creole Oil Company in Lake Maracaibo Venezuela which was poisoned by pollution.

Rockefeller Estate Interior

CIAA Office

Lake Maracaibo

Nelson Rockefeller continued his collection of artifacts and founded the Primitive Art Museum in 1954. The museum included art from Africa, Oceania, and Latin America. The museum later closed in 1960 and he shifted his focus to his political career.

The items from the Primitive Arts Museum were promised to the Metropolitan Museum in 1969. The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing named after Nelson Rockefeller’s son opened with the items from the collection in 1982. These images showcase the wing reenvisioned to display the footprint by Rockefeller and the US government in Latin America.

Primitive Arts Museum

Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

Reeinvisioned Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

Assembly: Bathroom Kitchen Stairs

Core Studio

Fall 2019 (CCNY)

Professor Fran Leadon

The project’s goal was to design three elements of a building the Bathroom, Kitchen, and Stairs. At the intersection between 114th and Broadway, there is an “unbuildable” lot. A giant outcropping occupies this lot. The design of the staircase sought to have you traverse through it until you reached the entrance of the townhouse. The curves of the stair burrowing through the rock act like a parasitic force.

Later throughout the house, the motif of curves going through in unconventional ways continues in the kitchen. The curves act as an obstacle one must go around, giving off a sense of anticipation as one spiral around to the next open space. The two clear open spaces on opposite sides of the curve are the kitchen and formal dining area. Yet the space is not entirely separated by the curve allowing for an unconventional limited interaction between those on either side through an opening defining the two rooms as a unified social area.

Inspired by Luigi Colani’s Satellite Kitchen, the bathroom separates itself from the whole building, a wholly enclosed capsule. This creates a sense of isolation and privacy. The bathroom provides the unique experience that one is entering a space entirely separate from that of the building instead of another integrated room found inside. Further separating the space inside from onlookers outside is the large screen doors and patterned window. These patterns, inspired by Alexander Girard, seek to provide a visual tie to the rest of the curved elements while adding to the ambiance found inside. This assembly of elements produces a space where one has a variety of experiences, such as the quiet, isolated bathroom pod and the kitchen’s open guiding curvature.

Model Elevationss

After Lights: Passage to Opacity

Advanced Studio Fall 2022 (GSAPP)

Professor Mario Gooden

In Collaboration with Karen Wang

Tapuhue (Place of the Gods) of the indigenous people has witnessed the expansion of Santiago since the early Spanish colonization. The mountain, which was renamed Cerro San Cristobal by the Spanish conquistadors, is now the most significant metropolitan park in South America. The project proposes that part of the mountain remains opaque to tourists and gives agencies to the Mapuche and other indigenous groups.

The two environments, one Forum and one Sanctuary, are two typologies for different events of gathering, interactions, and healing/learning practices. They are connected with a path that begins with the obsolete observatory and follows the moon cycle. In light of the recent protests in Chile that have led to the writing of a new constitution, the project envisions how indigenous epistemology, especially cosmological knowledge, informs political and social decisions.

The research into indigenous epistemology is a start that allows us to challenge the current notions of the global. Rather than offering solutions, we intend to use architecture as an opportunity to imagine the identity of the other. Recognizing the irreparable wound of colonialism and imagining the world in terms of opacity as a chaotically resonating whole.

In 1903, American scientists built an observatory on the top of the hill; in 1908 the Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception was inaugurated with the stature of the Virgin Mary. Over time the development around San Cristobal rendered the observatory out of use due to the light pollution.

Manuel Foster Observatory and Immaculate Conception

We focused on the mountain that had been on the edge of the city. It was named Cerro San Cristobal during the colonial period. The mountain rejects the grid and has been dedicated to agricultural work and populated since the pre-Hispanic period by indigenous Inca and Mapuche families until the 19th century. The map shows the expansion of the grid, visualizing colonial expansion and territorialization of the land. We where drawn to the site as it overlooks Plaza Banquedano where the recent protests took place.

San Cristobal today is the largest park in South America and a tourist destination. It was developed into the Santiago Metropolitan Park which has 5 million visitors each year.

Santiago Chile City Plan

Yuyan Wang depicts the imposition of relentless light as a form of capitalist authoritarianism and neocolonial control that demands ceaseless productivity while ignoring the ecological and human damage inflicted by the renunciation of darkness in her short film The Moon Also Rises. Through this analysis, we are interested in how Yuyan Wang is able to convey meanings and messages through ambiguity. By overlaying sound and light values, we analyzed Yuyan Wang’s approach to research and found materials and compositions that create a world of relation and opacity. Yuyan Wang shows how light is used beyond illumination but acts as a tool to manifest capitalistic and state power.

The Moon Also Rises Short Film Diagram

Test Intervention Section and Site Analysis

The first intervention site is in between the observatory and the statue of the Virgin Mary on the popular tourist route. The test intervention blocks out views and surrounding light, pointing towards the sky. The exterior is comprised of wood panels of different thicknesses ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches. The interior is covered with hammered copper creating the illusion of moonlight over the river. The Inca civilization viewed the Milky Way as a river flowing across the night sky. In the river, they saw Dark Constellations which were comprised of the darkness between the stars. These constellations marked key events throughout the year.

Taking the obsolete observatory as an arrival point, the path is separate from the tourists’ route. As it goes through the landscape working with its change in altitude it positions locations of rest along the way. These stops act as markers to experience a variety of cosmic events such as solar and lunar eclipses.

The concept of temporality is ever present in the Mapuche world vision. All are governed by cyclic changing; day to night; life to death; and the rotation of the seasons. The procession recognizes one’s connection with the earth and celestial bodies as it weaves into and above the terrain. The path is a singular route recognizing the tension between the mountain, and the city.

Pathway Plan and Sections

The two spaces act as alternative typologies providing two different environments for indigenous practices. The Forum acts as a communal and civic-driven space. Events at the forum include a celebration of the winter solstice which involves dances and meals between all members of the community. There is also Nguillatun in which the community and guests gather around a bonfire in a ceremony of petition and gratitude. The forum provides a seating area for guests as well as a pathway behind it in order not to disturb the activities happening. It also recognizes its location as its multiple entrances frame the view of the city below. The light in the city dimmed the stars in the sky making visible the wound of the post-colonial reality.

The Sanctuary involves healing rituals such as Machitun and personal meetings with Machi or community leaders. Making a space looking at skies and reflections on San Cristobal, the capital of Chile is far from neutral. It provides a meeting point where indigenous people invite foreign scholars as guests with an agency as the host and stewards of the land.

Site Plan and Forum/Sanctuary Plan and Sections

Forum Renders