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Freddy Mamani y la nueva arquitectura andina en Bolivia

…Freddy Mamani no es arquitecto de profesión. Nacido en una pequeña comunidad aimara llamada Catavi, partió trabajando hace veinte años como asistente de albañil, pero sus sueños lo empujaron a estudiar en la Facultad Tecnológica de Construcciones Civiles en la Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (1986), y posteriormente cursar la carrera de Ingeniería Civil en la UBI. Todo esto a pesar, como explicó en un artículo reciente, que su familia le instaba a desistir: “no estudie una carrera cara, es una carrera para ricos”.

Mientras tanto en la ciudad El Alto –receptora durante décadas de miles de indígenas campesinos venidos de La Paz, Oruro y Potosí probando suerte- se formaba una nueva burguesía aimara que encontró en el oficio de Mamani a uno de los suyos: un tipo sin aprensiones academicistas, pero embarcado en la idea de encontrar una identidad arquitectónica aimara. “Busco darle identidad a mi ciudad recuperando elementos de nuestra cultura originaria”, comenta Freddy en “Arquitectura andina de Bolivia…”.

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Freddy Mamani and the new andean architecture in Bolivia.

Freddy Mamani isn’t a “professional” architect. Born in an aymara village called Catavi he started twenty years ago as a builder assistant, but his dreams pushed him to study at the Civil Construction technical faculty at Mayor de San Andrés University (UMSA), and later enrolling at UBI (Universidad Boliviana de Ingeniería) to study civil engineering. All of this even though, as he explained in a recent article, that his family didn’t want him to do it saying it was “an expensive career” and it was “for rich people”.

Meanwhile in the city of El Alto –a city that for many years has received thousands of indigenous people from La Paz, Oruro and Potosí– a new aymara bourgeoisie was forming who found Mamani as one of them: a guy without academic apprehensions, but embarked in the idea to find an aymaran architectonic identity. “I search to give my city identity by recovering elements of our culture” says Freddy in the book “Andean Architecture of Bolivia”.

Bolivia’s Dream Houses in the Sky

The Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre doesn’t have an office, use a computer, or draw formal blueprints. He sketches his plans on a wall or transmits them orally to his associates. Since 2005, Mamani and his firm have completed sixty projects in El Alto, the world’s highest city, which sits at nearly fourteen thousand feet, on an austere plateau above La Paz. In the past twenty years, the economy there has burgeoned, along with an enterprising, mostly indigenous population. Mamani earned his fame building mixed-use dream houses for the city’s nouveaux riches.