The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre's extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning "spaceships"—giving his work the nickname "spaceship architecture."
But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful "new Andean" style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting.
Read More