Freddy Mamani was a bricklayer before he was an architect. In El Alto — a city of nearly a million above La Paz, roughly three quarters Aymara — he invented a building type: the cholet. Ground-floor shopfronts, a vast salón de eventos above, apartments on top, raw brick shell crowning the whole thing.

The face is mirrored teal curtain-wall glass, chrome trim and acrylic panels painted by hand, brush by brush. Inside, dozens of chandeliers throw violet, emerald and turquoise across white marble. Mamani takes his colours from Tiwanaku and from the awayo cloths Aymara mothers carry their children in. Textile logic, not architectural modernism.