Where did the kitsch palaces on the streets of Bolivia come from? Strange creations of the self-taught architect Freddie Mamani

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Freddie Mamani burst into the world of architecture like a typhoon. A nugget, self-taught, Bolivian Indian who splashed crazy colors, ornaments, strange combinations and incredible details into the monochrome world of modern architecture. The young architect turned the city of El Alto into the capital of postmodern architecture, without owning a computer and not knowing how to draw blueprints. Who is this daredevil who descended from the peaks of the Andes and challenged everyone around?

Aymara is an indigenous people of Bolivia, living mainly in the Andes. Aymara - almost four million people. They raise llamas, knit ponchos and bags, weave wampa cane boats, play the pinkoglio flute, and work in the mines. The ornamental culture of the Aymara is distinguished by bright colors, a variety of forms and recognizable rhythms. One of the Aymara people became president of Bolivia in 2006. And yet another - with the sonorous name Freddie and the traditional surname Mamani - populated the gray streets of Bolivian cities with bright buildings, similar to the patterns of knitted hats and wallets for coca leaves.

The world of architecture found out about Freddie Mamani in 2016, when German photographer Peter Granser released an album dedicated to the modern look of the city of El Alto. El Alto is the most "elevated" metropolis in the world, it is located at an altitude of almost four thousand meters above sea level. Most of its inhabitants call themselves Aymara Indians. The city is still very young, it has been actively under construction only for the last three decades, and most of the houses were built in a short time, from cheap materials. A young metropolis full of "box" houses, roaring vehicles, smog from industrial enterprises … and devoid of its own "face". Of course, before the advent of Freddie Mamani's architecture. The monotonous rhythms of new buildings are "broken" by colorful houses with strange proportions and shades, round windows and staircases that violate all the laws of logic … So, thanks to the photographs of Granser, amazed by the works of Mamani, the history of the Bolivian architect became known to the world.

And his story is "the great Latin American dream", the path from a poor Indian boy to a rich man who did not betray himself on the way to fame. From the age of fourteen, he worked at a construction site, helping his father. It seemed that for a young man from a poor family from the outskirts, this was almost the only way to find money for food. However, since childhood, Freddie Mamani refused to “be like everyone else” and “know his place”. At sixteen, despite the ban of his parents, he entered the university in the construction department. He was terribly disappointed with the educational program. He heard about American architecture, about French and Italian … but there was no place for national cultures in the history of architecture. The Native American boys and girls sitting in the audience, and the rest of the young Bolivians, did not know anything about the traditional buildings of their native country - and indeed of the whole of Latin America! And then Freddie decided that “it's time to return this land to ourselves” - it's time to give Bolivia its own architecture and at the same time not forget about the roots.

For another decade and a half, Mamani worked, gaining experience and portfolio. At the beginning of the 2000s, he made a breakthrough - he opened his own architectural bureau, which soon became the largest construction company in the region. Today Mamani has more than two hundred subordinates, and their "price tag" starts at 300 thousand dollars. Surprisingly, Mamani himself does not use a computer, and does not strive to draw up drawings by hand. He makes color sketches, and sometimes simply retells his ideas to colleagues and closely monitors the implementation of architectural fantasies. But he has many years of work behind him at a construction site, and in his heart is love for his native people. Freddie Mamani's customers are mainly rich Aymaras, engaged in the construction business and trade, educated and enterprising, those who, like him, did not want to “know their place”.

Mamani has designed nearly a hundred buildings in Bolivia and two beyond, a dance hall in Peru and a nightclub in Brazil. And although the young architect is interesting to many, he himself prefers to work at home. He believes that bringing national motives back to Bolivian cities is his true calling. What Mamani is doing is called the "new Andean style" - ornaments of the Andean peoples are combined with classical and modernist architectural motifs. Freddie is inspired by carpets, ceramics, weaving, embroidery and ancient Andean temples dedicated to Pachamama, the mother goddess. In the interior, he is a big fan of colored lighting.

Mamani's buildings seem to be very diverse, but they are made according to the same "template". The first floors are occupied by shops or dance clubs, the second is occupied by apartments, and the upper floor is given to the owner of the house. The shape of the buildings as such is a conservative modernist "box", and the decor and color of the facade play the main role.

His kitschy "profitable palaces" invariably provoke a storm of debate. Someone becomes a real fan of Freddie, and someone writes petitions demanding to immediately demolish this disgrace.

Mamani's dream of introducing the Andes architecture to the world has also come true. He lectured at the Metropolitan Museum in the United States, where he talked about his own work and the traditions of his ancestors. "For eighteen years I have been introducing color to El Alto!" - he said. Aymara cannot live in gray "boxes", their world should be full of bright colors … The ideal for Mamani is the ancient city of Tiwanaku, a symbol of a powerful civilization that controlled the entire continent three thousand years ago.

Thanks to Mamani, crowds of tourists flock to El Alto. Other architects and designers imitate him - but Mamani is only happy. The new Andean style, created by a young Bolivian architect, is a symbol of the revival of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, their growing role in the culture and economy of the country. And if it seems to someone that the Indians of Latin America can only knit hats and grow coca, Freddie Mamani and his customers declare: “We are Bolivians, we are Aymara, we are proud of our people and are capable of much!”.