One night in “biotopes” and B & B in Bolivia’s urban jungle

Welcome to One night inA series about staying in the most populous available for rest.

When I visited La Paz, Bolivia, in June, I expected a high expert concrete and brick in the world’s largest capital. It is mostly what I have received. But I also wounded to find an alternative vision of urbanism, where the trees serve as if the civities of the cuisine, and sunlight pours through an artificial wooden bed and breakfast in front of the city’s custom center.

Bolivia is among Most of the diseases of biological reasons In the world, ranging from the Amazon jungle in the north to cold, dry central Anders, and its forests and mountains are home hundreds of parent animal and plant species. However, it obese the destruction of environment, climate change and economic instability. Busting jumped at a rate of 32 percent 2023 Four times in Brazil in relation to the population and food safety is a great issue in the entire price The poorest country of South America.

Lindsai Tellez She began to learn about these issues when she worked in the Bolivia’s mining industry and traveled to small villages across the country. “I saw and I looked out very close as destroyed,” she said. Year later, when she became an architect of exercise, her experiences inspired her to create Biotope Boutique HouseNatural refuge in the city of Spravling. Describes a renovated concrete house in exposed wood and greenery as a “prototype for the presentation of communities as it is possible to have a sustainable way of life.”

“In Andes, in every culture that settle in Bolivia, we are very close to the mother country,” she says. “Everyone on this planet, I think he wants to live nicely.”

I learned about it biotop By accident, after renting Airbnb from Tellez in the central neighborhood of Sopocachi. I have always been fascinated by a natural architecture, from National homes to Bamboo structuresBut I didn’t expect to find the sunlight of the greenhouse while firming between buildings. I wanted to see myself as a small lot in a dense housing neighborhood can begin to vomit with nature.

Thursday

15:00: I’m taking a bus to Calackoto Residential Area, which is welcome okay from the center of La Paz. The Biotopa property is from the outside outside: a giant metal fence offers small heights of cafes on site and lush greenery that lie inside. I open the gate and I get inside.

After entering, there is a foyer and a small workspace, but my attention is attracted in greenhouse, visible behind large glass windows in sharp contrast to existing concrete and burns that regulate interiors. It contains a vertical garden with the sun with the sun filtrizing from above, you may find the closest thing to get to the forest without moving more than an hour outside the city.

Over the years, the vision served multiple purposes, Tellez says later interview. She recently used as a kindergarten for native plants, aimed at helping biologists focused on forest disappearing efforts in the country. It took more than a year to successfully cultivate the seed, says, and the staff regularly fall to maintain plants when Tellez is outside the city.

17:00: Since the property was plugged between other housing parties and fists of newborn high rise, only certain parts of the house receive direct sunlight, especially in winter. The roof terrace is one of them. When I climb the top, I can see the shift of the views on the surrounding mountains and rock formations, as near Valle de la Luna, because the late afternoon sun is preparing for disappearance.

I also get a panoramic view of the quick prosecution of Calackoto development. Green towerBolivia The highest skyscraper, the dwarf housing low Dircians were scattered in all directions around her. In the distance, one line of city cargo systems – the backbone of its public transport switches to the nearby mountain, connects the district center center.

Before the pandemic, Tellez often hosted tours for students who would notice how the house was working and ending up on the terrace, watching in the wiped on the outline in stylistic opposition to the small world of biotopes. La Paz has developed in a concert with a steep valley living, but modern structures, from residential buildings of mountains to a great sign that advertisement cell phone supplier, start dominating. “It’s like we’re trying to exist in a city that works in a different way,” Tellez says.

19:00: I decide to cook dinner and head down to the kitchen, the peak of the domestic Biophilic designthat immediately becomes my favorite room. Below the glass ceiling is a vine canopy, their entangled roots covering one of the walls; The room feels like an experiment in giving free nature to start Amok through the built environment that replaced once. Occasionally the leaves fall on the counter while preparing food.

Bolivia has affected food safety issues of extreme weather and economic instability. Farmers often believe that it is more profitable to sell for food peru, causing to the right domestic prices and government Tighten the boundary controls. Lack of basic items, such as eggs, rice and cooking oil, are common.

Tellez also used the vertical garden to grow vegetables and hand over visitors about food safety. Shortly after I stayed in Biotop, told me that during the pandemic worked with local programs to distribute food boxes around the village.

22:00: I return above in the second floor of biotopes, where there is one permanent guest room, two if Tellez, who often travels, out of town, as well as today. The temperature in Calachoto decreases near freezing at night and there is no way to prevent this house to a cold. At the end of 2010, Tellez began rebuilding and added to an existing structure that was largely built concrete, and new skyscrapers block direct sunlight that could warm the home. But there is a space heater, hot shower and piles warm blankets.

Friday

8:00: I head down to the kitchen and find the sunlight in the flood in a nearby Vašura. When I wash myself quickly and hang part of my clothes, they dry almost immediately. The sun also started covering the greenhouse. Biotop, I learn, uses solar power and recycles my water, using gray water for vertical garden and plants and trees in the entire house.

The biotope was completed at the time when Golivia’s group began creating identities through radical, sometimes controversial forms of architecture. In El Alto, a common working class with a view of La Paz, Architect Freddy Mamani has designed decorated corners (Portmanteau for indigenous term “chola” and “chalet”) which nodes by the historic history in the country, but they are also criticized as the sanctuary of wealth. The architect Santos Churata designs buildings in a similar style, but with a picture robots from Transformers Series.

He finished the biotope for Tellez, who changed his perspective as an architect. “I really can’t just imagine constructing and designing normal buildings, concrete buildings,” she says.

9:00: Tellez tells me later that the area in front of the greenhouse served as a cafe, a space that created the opportunity to “call people to come and see what happens inside.” The cafe was closed most days from the pandemic, because Tellez was lacking time and staff to hold it, but she has plans to host more touring space. For many visitors seeing a home that uses nature for energy, food and quality of life is A new experience. Once, the couple visited the vertical garden with her young child, who started choosing spinach and salad that ranked. “A small child has just started to eat out of there, like a small sheep,” Tellez says.

“Parents said” No, I don’t eat that! “And I said,” Of course he can, “she remembered. It was really nice that a little kid can only take something and take it into the mouth and be happy.”

11:00: I’m leaving through the front terrace. When Tellez holds tours, it intentionally makes the last stop. Initially, the area is infertile, only a cement passage surrounded by intact soil. But when birds began visiting other plants and trees that surround the cafe and the rest of the property, lowered the seeds left by the terrace covered with greenery. Tellez is now using an anecdote to tell a bigger story, the one hoping to keep with visitors and influence the future development of their country. “We can tell people that if we work for nature, nature will succeed,” she says.