For years, Denise Torres drove past a miniature skyline tucked behind a fast food restaurant in East Dallas without knowing who built it.
On trips to the post office with her boyfriend, she’d spot the tiny futuristic towers rising beside the dumpsters near Casa Linda Plaza. The installation is hidden in plain sight off a busy intersection.
“I love that there’s kind of some mystery to it,” she said. “It gives people a sense of communal curiosity. I think we're all on the same level of not knowing and we all want to find out.”
Torres searched online for answers but came up empty. Then photos of the tiny city began circulating on a Dallas subreddit, where East Dallas residents traded theories about its origins and the artist behind it.
KERA set out to find the artist behind the growing miniature skyline. He is Salvador Ruiz, a 50-year-old restaurant employee who bikes to work. He spent the last two-and-a-half years transforming a barren strip of land in Casa Linda into an evolving miniature metropolis inspired by Dubai’s futuristic density, Hong Kong high-rises and Singapore’s vertical gardens.
He used cardboard, styrofoam and scraps most people would throw away.
“It was going to start growing weeds and everything, and I just said, something else needs to be here,” Ruiz said.
The project began with one small red house made from cardboard and duct tape. Ruiz said he originally started cleaning the area behind the restaurant because it had become overgrown and neglected. But after placing that first tiny structure in the dirt, the idea kept growing.
Today, the installation stretches across the grassy embankment behind the restaurant, filled with handmade skyscrapers, plazas, waterfalls and hidden details tucked between towers. Many of the buildings are built from packing tubes, plastic curtain rods and discarded retail fixtures Ruiz collects while biking around the neighborhood.
One tower began as a cardboard mailing cylinder used for shipping maps and posters. Another incorporates a metal rack salvaged from a grocery store display.
“I thought to myself, I could use that,” Ruiz said while pointing to one of the structures. “Now we have a really cool building.”
Ruiz has no formal arts training. He describes the work as a hobby rooted in childhood memories.
“When I was little, I would always play in my backyard,” he said. “My parents’ house was under construction, and we had a lot of lumber and bricks. I would just start putting them together.”
That instinct for improvisation shaped the city’s aesthetic. The skyline blends recognizable architectural influences from around the world with Ruiz’s own imagined designs. That creativity now shapes the growing installation he named Arcadia, a reference to the mythological Greek place said to exist in harmony with nature.
The installation has become increasingly collaborative. Families, children and neighbors now contribute miniature toys, decorations and found objects to the cityscape. A disco ball cut in half became a futuristic dome. Tiny brass mushrooms sit hidden among greenery. Miniature gardens spill from balconies.
“There's just little things hidden that I put in the city that if you're not looking you won't even see,” Ruiz said. “But if you really look hard, you'll be like, ‘oh look over here, look over there.’ So that adds a little charm to it.”
What began as a solitary beautification project has quietly become a neighborhood gathering place. Ruiz said families often stop after church or dinner to take photos while children explore the winding paths between buildings.
“People walk over to where I work and they'll stop there first or after they're done eating,” he said. “Parents take pictures with their kids. People drive up, park back there and get out and take pictures and stuff.”
Ruiz said even severe Dallas storms failed to topple the structures because many are anchored nearly a foot underground for stability.
Online, videos and photos of the installation have spread across social media, introducing the tiny skyline to audiences far beyond East Dallas. Ruiz said the attention has been surprising but affirming.
“It just shows that if you want to do something good, you can,” he said. “If you see something where there’s a void, you could add something there to add beauty to it.”
For curious residents like Torres, the Reddit thread only deepened the fascination.
"It's just one of the little quirks that makes the little Casa Linda Plaza so special,” she said. “It's something different, something new, something that makes you stop and think about art, think about the city you're in.”
Meantime, the little city continues to evolve. Ruiz says there’s no final blueprint and no clear end point.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be finished,” he said.
