Neo-Andean Architecture

Neo-Andean is a contemporary architectural movement centered in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, where more than one hundred buildings in the style now shape the skyline. Its most prominent figure is Freddy Mamani, a civil engineer who began as a construction laborer, completed his first Neo-Andean building in 2005 and has since designed more than sixty further structures across the city. Its buildings, popularly called cholets, a blend of cholo and chalet, combine elaborate decorative facades drawing on forms from the Tiwanaku ruins, cornered straight lines said to represent the masculine and curves said to represent the feminine, with color palettes drawn from traditional Aymara textiles. Most Neo-Andean structures were built after 2006, coinciding with Evo Morales's inauguration as Bolivia's first indigenous president, a modest economic boom, and a rise in Aymara cultural pride that the buildings are widely seen locally as expressing.