If you ever get a chance to visit the Bolivian city El Alto, we bet you will be first taken aback by the buildings that it flaunts and then by the fact that the city is self-governed and is 13,000 feet above sea level. You may ask what is so special about its buildings that have put the other two extremely impressive facts to shame? Well, you need to see them to understand this.
El Alto is home to many vibrant buildings that have been designed by the indigenous architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre and to say that they resemble to incredibly striking life-sized graffiti would be anything but wrong. The architect incorporates pre-Columbian history of Bolivia in his designs and have openly admitted to using textures, colours, shapes and patterns inspired from a traditional woven cloth of the Aymara tribe of this region. Mamani makes sure that his sharply-angled and vividly-coloured buildings with circular windows are more than just an eye-candy in the architectural world and hence, all of his constructed structures are multi-purpose in their use. The buildings serve as stalls for vendors, as party venues and as residential apartments, in the ascending order. The multi-functional yet tremendously creative buildings by Mamani are truly the greatest combination that architectural community has ever seen and we really cannot get enough of them!
Image Credits: Freddy Mamani Silvestre
h/t: Colossal