New documentary showcases Bolivia's “spaceship architecture”

2015-02-23T13:29:00-05:00

The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre’s extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning “spaceships”—giving his work the nickname “spaceship architecture.” But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful “new Andean” style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting.

Previously: 'Neo-Andean' architecture sprouts in Bolivia

'Neo-Andean' architecture sprouts in Bolivia

2014-05-27T14:09:00-04:00

Brash, baroque and steeped in native Andean symbols, the mini-mansions are a striking sight on the caked-dirt streets of El Alto, the inexorably expanding sister city of Bolivia's capital. They attest to a new class of indigenous nouveau riche, many of them merchants who converted street stalls into fortunes. [...] The mini-mansions mesh modern and traditional architecture and flaunt, above all, two things: their owners' wealth and their Aymara heritage.

Archinect - News

New documentary showcases Bolivia's “spaceship architecture”

'Neo-Andean' architecture sprouts in Bolivia