In my travels to La Paz I like to see the city but usually I don’t enjoy the buildings. The architecture is made professionally but they are copies of the buildings made in USA or Europe, that are quite excellent but to the reality of USA or Europe. Actually I noticed a massive presence of the architectural school of Modernism that has logic in the crowded countries of Europe after the twentieth century wars, but not in our countries in South America that have a third of the population and at least the double in area of those countries. Even more our societies have a happiness in colors and shapes, modernism in America is like use a disguise of Chinese; the modernism in Brazil worked because Niemeyer filled it with a honest Brazilian spirit of movement and music.
So I felt a big amazement when I saw the colorful building in the centre of the photograph. This condominium was designed by the talented architect Priscila Claure. Although I cannot do an architectural analysis without be in its interior I can say that the exterior and its urban presence is quite interesting and beautiful, it has proportion, scale and harmony. It has an inspiration in Piet Mondrian paintings, but in an urban scale that transmit correctly the happiness of our shared culture in the Andean Plateau where traditionally our clean buildings in time of parties were “dressed” with bold colors. Usually is said that we in architecture get the most of our creativity at 40’s, in the moment of the design the architect had 22 years old and designed the most memorable building I ever saw in La Paz. I’d love to see more of her production.
Certainly to the untrained eye it could resemble something of MVRDV’s Mirador Tower in Madrid, but that is far from reality, both buildings are quite different because the one in Spain is like a radiography of the differences in functions. In this Bolivian building instead there is a celebration of life and an optimism that says that to be authentic to yourself you don’t need to copy other models.
Qhapaq 