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Bahay Kubo and the Filipino Concept of Space
Under one roof
By Augusto F. Villalon
A traditional
bahay kubo which can still be seen in most rural areas of the Philippines
THE WAY we live tells us who we are, so
our homes are dead
giveaways. The way we arrange our homes show how we like to
live and how we relate to the other
people who live with us. The
positioning of furniture and choice of embellishments are
personal choices. However,
the arrangement of the different
spaces inside a house and their varying degrees of privacy
demonstrate the lifestyle
patterns of each culture.
The traditional bahay kubo follows the centuries-old Southeast
Asian rural archetype
of the single-room dwelling where all
family activities happen in one space. After sleeping mats are
rolled up in
the mornings, the same space is given over to
daytime activities that sometimes spill outdoors to the shaded
areas
underneath the house.
The rural bahay kubo evolved into the bahay na bato, where
the size of the house was enlarged
but much of the single-room
lifestyle remained. It was not uncommon for sleeping mats to be
laid out in the living
room for the children every night.
Unlike today's homes with separate rooms for parents, children
and other
family members, the ancestral home's two or three
large bedrooms were shared. Rows of canopied four poster beds
were
laid out in the rooms with each occupant assigned his own
aparador to keep his things. Although the wooden walls
visually
separated the different rooms, a strip of calado fretwork
between the ceiling and the tops of the walls circulated both
air
and sound freely around the interior. So much for privacy.
However, in houses like these, residents found enough
privacy
to conceive, deliver and nurse babies, to care for the sick and
the aged.
Communal space
Unlike
the westerner who places a premium on privacy, the
Filipino prefers living space that is communal, surrounding
himself
with people all the time.
The idea of locking the front door, leaving the house in the
morning and returning
to an empty house in the evening is not
even thought of. Someone is always at home, whether family,
distant relative
or household help.
Maybe the Filipino fears being alone. He makes certain that
members of his family keep him
company at home. Within his
home, everything seems to happen at the same time. Children
shriek, adults talk, servants
shuffle. The decibel level is at the
same extreme as the radio or television set that is constantly
going.
Three
or more generations of the same family live their separate
but interconnected lives under one roof, most of the time
hanging
out in one room. When in need of solitude, a thin cloth
curtain strung over an opening stakes out a private section.
Temporary
as the privacy may turn out to be, the fluttering
illusion of an unlatchable door screens the rest of the family out.
Blissful seclusion means not being able to see the others, but
still remaining within full hearing range. In the one-room
bahay
kubo, privacy is sometimes achieved by turning one's back to
the room, by facing the wall for a few moments
of solitude, but
the separation is never total.
Filipinos follow the Asian concept of shared space and limited
privacy. The traditional Japanese houses are essentially
designed as a single space that can temporarily be separated
by
sliding paper screens that unify the house and garden into one
single area.
To westerners with a non-Asian
concept of space, sections of
downtown Manila appear chaotic. Houses, apartments, shops,
markets, all seem to burst
with people. Crowds are everywhere.
The hustle and bustle of the people reflects in the architecture.
There is a jumble
of buildings, unruly roof lines jutting out
everywhere, balconies and laundry hanging over sidewalks and
streets under
a spaghetti of electrical wiring that dangles over
neon signs. There seems to be no order at all. Everything
visually
and noisily competes with each other. Narrow
sidewalks are filled with hawkers occupying the space normally
reserved
for pedestrians.
How different this cityscape is from the orderliness of, say
London or Frankfurt, where rows
of buildings are clearly
demarcated form one another, and sidewalks are wide
promenades dotted with clean benches,
and people are
sprinkled into the streetscape. In contrast to that, we thrive in
crowds that teem, enjoying close
contact with each other,
jostling each other when we walk down a street. We tolerate
closer contact with each other,
unlike westerners who maintain
more space between each other, as a buffer to avoid close
contact among themselves.
One for all
In the western mindset, a man's home is his domain, his castle
that is built to last forever.
It is where privacy is at a premium.
European homes prefer enclosing spaces from each other:
everything is definite
and separate, the living room, dining
room, kitchen, the bedrooms. Everyone goes into the corridor,
disappears into
his private room, and closes the door behind
him.
This lifestyle is the opposite of the traditional Filipino
way of
living, where bedrooms do not necessarily open out into an
internal corridor but to an external one, the volada,
a narrow,
enclosed balcony that runs along the exterior of the upper floor
of the bahay na bato, linking the bedrooms
and the other rooms
of the house to each other.
In earlier days, the se?ora of the house would look out of her
window every morning, waiting for her favorite hawkers to bass
on the street below. From the comfort of her living
room, she
shopped and haggled while picking up the latest street gossip.
In some neighborhoods of Manila hawkers still
come around,
and residents remain in contact with each other even if their
homes are new and designed in the rigidly
partitioned western
manner, the traditional pattern of living is still Filipino, where
everyone still crowds into
a few rooms to sleep, where there are
people at all times, and where life is not bound by the walls of
the house but
goes out to include the lives of the neighbors
along the street. In the Filipino lifestyle, it is all for one and one
for all.
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