Looking at it from above, the Bolivian city of El Alto looks like a long colored carpet made up of thousands of low houses that are lost in the horizon.
Looking at it from above, the Bolivian city of El Alto it looks like a long colored carpet made up of thousands of low houses that are lost in the horizon.
Originally El Alto which is located on the outskirts of Peace, the administrative capital of Bolivia was one slum indigenous, but then with the urbanization the need was felt to transform the dilapidated neighborhood into something more habitable and welcoming.
The change started from the buildings with unusual shapes and colors, gaudy colors with the predominance of red and green. All thanks to the forty-three year old architect freddy mamani who is firmly convinced that in thirty years La Paz will become a suburb of El Alto.
There is certainly no lack of originality: irregular shapes, singular windows that they draw their identity from the indigenous Aymara culture.
There are, in fact, circles, the Andean cross, drawings reminiscent of butterflies, frogs, snakes.
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According to Mamani, thanks to its buildings, the Aymara local culture is catching up in Bolivia.
What they were dilapidated houses they have turned into whimsical buildings, a real one architectural revolution that puts color wherever it can. However, the outline remains the same: unpaved roads and still unfinished facades.
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Today El Alto is there second most populous city of Bolivia after Santa Cruz and its change began in 2005 with the election of the president Evo Morales which has reintegrated the Aymara people, long marginalized by Bolivian society, into society.
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For many, Mamani's architecture is the symbol of a newfound confidence and the economic flourishing of the country. Currently there are about sixty buildings already built and dozens of others under construction.
However, they are not lacking the criticisms, there are those who think that the houses are alone cathedrals in the desert or one status symbol for rich.
Dominella Trunfio
