In 2015, when my wife, Luz Beatriz Vélez, and I embarked on a hotel project near Bogotá, in the municipality of La Vega, Cundinamarca, we faced a major challenge: how to design an aesthetic that truly invited disconnection in the heart of nature. The task was to merge the unconventional design of an Eco Lodge with local techniques and materials. In other words, how to transform steel beams, angles, cement, and blocks into something more intriguing than simple cubes with windows or round glamping structures. The result was Ecolodge Boutique La Nuit, and today, we need to share this achievement with someone else—José Nicolás Buelvas, the "roof mathematician"… and his father.
We were unconvinced by the practicality of industrial roofing and were instead captivated by the beauty of natural palm coverings. What we didn’t anticipate was the difficulty of integrating such traditional materials into our design. But as the saying goes, “ignorance is bold,” and as experience later showed us, it is also “blessed.”
It was a leap of faith, one we sought to cushion by working with the best. In Colombia, the experts in this craft are in the state of Córdoba. Their reputation is far from recent, and while self-taught, their skills have been passed down through generations. That’s how we came across the third generation of the Buelvas family in the town of Planeta Rica. At first, we sought out José de Jesús Buelvas Pérez, the father of those we would later meet. But we would later learn that he had sadly passed away just a short time before. Yet this led us to his son, José Nicolás, who, alongside his brother Oscar and a team of “cousin-apprentices,” carried on the craft his father had taught them from a young age.
Meeting José Nicolás was our first blessing. It didn’t take him long to see how his artistry could align with our design. That marked the beginning of several months of collaboration, filled with stories worthy of Colombian magical realism. One in particular captures the essence of a concept both common and misunderstood in our country: malicia indígena—a term often misinterpreted as mere craftiness or trickery. But my experience with the Buelvas family showed me otherwise.
Had I not met José Nicolás’s father, I would never have realized that malicia indígena is, in fact, a form of intelligence that defies conventional logic. It often emerges in those with limited formal education—just like José de Jesús Buelvas. According to his son, who at the time was finishing a postgraduate degree in mathematics in Bogotá, his father—this humble man who spent more time atop his palm-thatched structures than in a classroom—had become Colombia’s undisputed reference for palm roof design.
With great pride, José Nicolás recounted a moment that illustrates this perfectly. One day, his father asked him to calculate the amount of wood needed for a traditional maloca with a pointed roof. This type of structure features wooden beams arranged in a star pattern, converging at the highest point. To reinforce them, circular wooden rings are placed at varying heights from top to bottom.
As José Nicolás worked on calculating the exact linear meters of those rings, his father casually glanced over his shoulder and, in his thick coastal accent, said: "Don’t complicate things, son. Just take the diameter and multiply it by about 3.15."
Imagine the astonishment of our future mathematician upon realizing that his father had just taught him "π"—without ever having studied it! And when asked how he knew, the old man simply shrugged: “That’s just how it is, don’t worry. It works for me.”
In my own research, I learned that mathematicians classify π as an irrational number. What better tribute to its poetry than this beautifully irrational wisdom—unburdened by equations or algorithms—that emerged from the mind of a humble craftsman from Planeta Rica?
I never had the chance to meet José de Jesús Buelvas, but everything I heard about him painted a picture of an extraordinary man who, on his own, found ways to expand his imagination into countless works, despite never seeking plaques or recognition. So next time you travel through Colombia, if you happen to pass by one of his creations, spare a thought for this Cordoban Archimedes, who, from above, is surely watching over the fruits of his brilliant "malicia indígena".
Guy Mijola
@lanuitencolombie
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