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Join the Architectural Association El Alto 2019

La Paz
Monday 22 July – Sunday 4 August 2019

Portable Cholets

As you walk in the streets of La Paz, you immediately understand that there is a mystic feeling in paceños. There is a practical and a sacred sense in all the things they do: the most ordinary routines can be naturally transformed into unique spiritual happenings. The VS El Alto will persist on questioning notions of identity, folklore and contemporary rituals translated into architecture.

If last year the VS investigated the masks, the costumes and the choreography of an actual Bolivian traditional dance – the Diablada – in the 2019 edition we

Why Freddy Mamani is Leading A New Andean Architecture

The media outbreak for architect Elisabetta Andreoli and artist Ligia D'Andrea’s book "Andean Architecture of Bolivia", which focuses on the work of Freddy Mamani - ex-bricklayer turned engineer and constructor- has become the excuse to talk about everything else related to the highland country of Bolivia.

Such as the shortcomings and luxuries of the rapid urban expansion dispersed in El Alto, the youngest city in Bolivia; the birth of a new Aymara bourgeoisie in the shadow of the white elites; and the birth of a contemporary architectural identity that bothers purists and makes Aymaras proud, but is rejected by local architecture schools. Below, you can find out more about this new type of architecture together with photos by Alfredo Zeballos.