Freddy Mamani Silvestre (born 1 November 1971) is a
Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
n self-taught architect noted for his development of the
Neo-Andean
Neo-Andean is a contemporary architectural movement primarily situated in El Alto, Bolivia, expressed in the city's many ''cholets'' (portmanteau of ''cholo'' and ''chalet''), or mini-mansions, and dancehalls. Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani has ...
architectural style. His work is most associated with the city of
El Alto
El Alto (Spanish for "The Heights") is the List of Bolivian cities by population, second-largest city in Bolivia, located adjacent to La Paz in Pedro Domingo Murillo Province on the Altiplano highlands. El Alto is today one of Bolivia's fastest- ...
and with the new social class of upwardly mobile indigenous Bolivians.
Biography
Mamani was born in
Catavi; his father was a bricklayer. They moved to El Alto while Freddy was at the age of six.
[ He also followed his father's profession as a bricklayer. He had dreams of becoming an architect, but his work schedule would not permit him to attend whatever classes available in his local universities. Eventually, he instead received his degrees in civil construction and engineering from the ]Universidad Mayor de San Andres
Universidad (Spanish for "university") may refer to:
Places
* Universidad, San Juan, Puerto Rico
* Universidad (Madrid)
Football clubs
* Universidad SC, a Guatemalan football club that represents the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala
...
and Universidad Boliviana de Informática respectively.
Work
Regarding Mamani's architectural style, Italian architect Elisabetta Andreoli, author of "Andean Architecture of Bolivia", once explained that "some of the forms have been taken out of Andean art. The Tiwanacotas used a language of civilization in their forms: textiles, ceramics, and architectural ruins. Mamani uses the Andean cross, the diagonal juxtaposition of the planes, the duplicity, the repetition, the circle, which makes all this a stylisation theme, that is its source."
References
Further reading
* ''La arquitectura de Freddy Mamani Silvestre'' by Elisabetta Andreoli and Ligia D'Andrea (La Paz: El Alto, 2013)
1971 births
Living people
Bolivian people of Aymara descent
Bolivian architects
21st-century architects
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