It was simply beautiful!--smoothen wooden posts and braces in natural varnish supporting a native roof. I was in Rizal, Laguna the other day and I chanced upon this lovely open hut. It's overall impression was refreshing to see.
The wooden posts were unmilled tree timber. They were a great idea. They just cleared them of nudges and branches and then cut the round timber in four. The one-fourth cuts were used as lateral posts and those with three-fourth cuts were used as corner posts.
The timber surface was smoothen and varnished and used as it is, mounted on a concrete pedestal and secured with machine bolts. Then, the braces were angled at the top supporting the bamboo roof rafter and beams. What really attracted me was how the wood finishing was treated. It looked romantically tropical, refreshing to the eyes and mind after you've been bored by modern city structures.
We stayed there beneath the hut for 2 days, enjoying the cool mountain breeze freely coming in and out of the open rustic structure. Later, when it was raining so hard on that mountain top, the same hut gave us sufficient cover and warmth.
In the early morning, we were greeted by resident wild mountain birds and some mayas who lived in the nook and crannies of the hut bamboo ceiling. They played around, flying to and fro corners and small openings in the hut. How I wished all house pinoy concepts would have the feature.
Nearby was a huge three-level tree house, also of bamboo and nipa, but no varnish applied. Can we have this in the city? I hope so. These are things that calmed the soul. I hope the senseless cutting of huge mature trees in the city would stop. My friend, Dennis, told me of a recent attempt to cut down another mature mahogany tree somewhere in our area in Project 8 to probably give way to a townhouse or condo construction. Thank God in never materialize.
No, these are not tips for termites. These are tips on how to shoo them off. The Philippines, being a tropical country, has ubiquitous problems with termites. Here are some suggestions on how to interfere with termite activity:
Call a termite expert to treat your property BEFORE constructing any structure.
If structures already exist and they're infected, just the same, call in the experts for their advices and service. Ask for guarantee of their service.
Apply anti termite treatments on wooden structural materials.
But calling in termite experts is not enough. Watch out for tree branches connecting to your roof. They often serve as bridges where termites cross over. Prune such trees every 3 to 6 months.
Termites can also travel on concrete. They do this by making tunnels out of plastered soil at the corners of your wall. The tunnels are aimed towards a wooden portion of your structure.
The trick is to expose termite passages to sunlight and air. They hate sunlight and air freely passing through their tunnels. Once you destroy and expose their tunnels they will abandon them.
To effectively prevent termites, use steel construction for your structural members, especially for ceiling and roof studs and frames. Make full use of concrete and PVC materials, too (like PVC door jambs).
Avoid using immature, light-weight lumber.
Keep your paper stocks, pictures, albums, stamp collections, and other items of paper or cardboard in sturdy Tupperware boxes that can be sealed. Don't keep them in your cabinets a long time. My sister lost a substantial amount of rare stamp collections to the termites last year because she kept it in her cabinet for years, forgetting about the possibility of termites.
Check your library often for termite signs.
Some people cut all the trees in their surroundings just to get rid of termites. Others cover the entire ground with concrete pavements. These are not advisable. We need Eco system balance to make our place really habitable. That means the existence of green and trees which neutralize excessive heat bouncing off from concrete walls and pavements.
A better alternative is to keep trees along the perimeter fence and to keep your structure in the center of your property, free from any contacts from trees. This, of course, along with safe soil anti termite treatments.
I'm not just talking about gardens in plazas or community centers. I'm talking about gardens right in the middle of crowded mass housing. We need to see more of this. Gardens not only accentuate concrete jungles but freshens and greens the scenery as well--the green that put life into the whole picture.
Garden and herbs can be started in simple hanging pots or makeshift plant boxes of wood crates or plastics or concrete. They can be placed on ledges at window jambs, or blank walls or any available space. The best option is to hang earthen or plastic pots or empty coconut shells on walls or sheds.
Urban gardens like this can alter somewhat the congested look of crowded mass housing and also refreshen the air a bit, besides being an added income earner or getting more veggie meal dishes on the family dinner table. If the pots or plant boxes holding them are painted, so much the better.
The sight of healthily spreading green shrubbery or spreading low vines or trees puts life into spaces and can even effect positive moods for people around them. Scientifically, plants add more oxygen and absorbs carbon monoxide in the air. Big, mature trees are highly responsible for this, but where they are impossible to be kept, small plants and low vines and spreading shrubbery can take their place.
Community Coops or associations can start this on their own and promote the project for others to follow. Then, the urban garden will bloom in no time. The local government can enter in to provide tips on how better to grow the plants and what organic methods of enriching them may be applied. In our times of terrible and often lethal air and environmental pollution, urban gardens are not anymore a choice. They are a must.
Indoor gardens are also encouraged, just make sure there are no extra water left in plant pots and inner leaves where mosquitoes can hatch eggs and propagate. Indoor gardens can be planted to herbs and veggies.
For trees--and you're really desperate to have them--bore a hole in your ground pavement until you reach the soil underneath. Then plant the tree there. Make sure the hole is wide enough to fit a mature trunk. Ipil trees or aratelis, bayabas, caimito, avocado, and the like are possible for this purpose.
I love the concept of Zen design for houses in the Philippines, how the character of quietude and relaxation are impressed on the design. I hope they apply that to HOUSEpinoy or Pinoy architecture. Imagine cheap row housing or crowded neighborhoods having Zen designs.
Zen design is not just Japanese architecture. It's particularly interested about the Zen mindset. Zen is a meditative predisposition in Buddhism. While I was aiming for a first dan black belt in karate (in my high school years) I learned about Zen from the books of Masutatsu Oyama, the legendary karate master. Zen builds the power to overcome difficulties with a quiet spirit. This is done through Zen meditations. Thus, the Zen design in architecture fosters a meditative life. You look at it and you feel calm and relaxed.
Calm and relaxed should not be the prerogative of the rich alone, those with more than enough money to afford a Zen house design. The masses deserve them, too. It will be a great service if the Zen character could be applied in community planning and in each individual house design. The Zen look commands a tranquil response from the soul and spirit, a powerful suggestion to respect peace and quiet. If you put that quality into a crowded neighborhood, imagine the change in people's character and attitude.
Pinoy architecture ideas like this needs more careful study. Architecture should not be a privilege enjoyed only by the rich and moneyed (which is what Philippine architecture is often about), offering best design options to a clientle able to pay the price. It's time to sit down and formulate something beneficial to mass or crowded housing, and I don't mean just providing the masses with mere walls and roof.
A Zen atmosphere promotes study, discipline, and an inclination to arts and the humanities. No, it has no power to force these on us, but it helps set the mind to think deeper about life.
Life attitude is mostly about what we see around us, how our environs influence our surroundings. Tattered houses and dirty surroundings can affect the community mindset. But with a little bit of Zen design--plus other design concepts we usually give to the rich--our crowded communities can have a meaningful transformation, no matter how slight.
How to start this? There should be new model communities built, even "crowded" ones, with design concepts possessing a touch of the sophistication that the moneyed enjoy--like Zen design. Make them affordable, but make them truly model communities--not a deteriorating quality that only ends up tattered, just the same. Some special projects are made to look thus only at the start, for the sole purpose of impressive press releases. It should be something we can truly call Pinoy architecture, HOUSEpinoy, and Asian, not just an architecture of the few.
There are rooms that lack sufficient ventilation, especially in compact houses where you find rooms sandwiched between rooms or built in the middle of the house. How do you make air circulate well so that such rooms wouldn't feel too hot to be in?
Install electric fans? You may get air that way but without enough openings to circulate fresh air in, you may end up getting sick with a respiratory ailment. Air conditioning? Yes, but brownouts will be your next problem. I've seen bedrooms like that and it's like hell in them especially during summer. No matter how small a bedroom is or how sandwiched by other rooms, try your best to have it well ventilated.
A well ventilated room is very important. If you're planning to put up a new bedroom make sure two of its walls face an open space where you can open windows. A room should have at least two windows. This is the best tip for ventilation.
Two openings on different sides of a room make air pass through it. The ideal condition is to have two windows opposite each other so air can easily enter your room and exit to the other opposite window. The next best thing is to have a window on a wall adjacent (but not on the same side) to a wall with a window. Having two windows on the same side will defeat the purpose of ventilation. Air will not pass through to enter your room.
If your room has only one window because all other walls are walls of another room, you may use the window of the room next to it. Apply an opening at the top of your windowless wall so that air can pass through and exit out the window of the other room. Just put wooden louvers or other decorative barriers on the opening.
The principle here is as simple as a can of liquid milk. If you put just one hole on the can and try to pour the milk out, it won't. But put two holes opposite each other and the milk flows out easily. The same with air in a bedroom. You need two windows on different sides.
For building small bedrooms in limited house areas, I recommend allowing small cut corners in each room to make way for a small opening for a window, aside from the main window--so you'd have two windows each room. It will reduce the area of the room, but it will mean better ventilation. In a bedroom, good ventilation is among the priority.
Poor Ventilation, Poor Life Quality
Poor ventilation means you get poor air circulation whenever you are in the room. If you sleep there, you'd feel lousy in the morning. Poor oxygen supply means less oxygen in the brain, and that means poor brain performance in school or at the office. It may also mean bad temperament--like, you'd get easily angry or disappointed.
Much later, poor ventilation affects your lungs and your overall health.
So, make sure your bedroom--and every living area in your house--gets perfect ventilation. Never mind if your house isn't the best looking in the neighborhood--as long as you breathe well in it.
A growing number of townhouse and condo builders are hacking away at all the full-grown trees in subdivisions. I went to three subdivisions in Cavite and you wouldn't believe how extremely hot it was there--and Cavite is supposed to be a province! I noticed how there was not a tree in sight, save some small gardens in cute plant boxes here and there and hanging plants in pots. No wonder subdivisions are getting warmer.
Some people favor cutting tall, old trees to reduce the incidence of termite colonies. Okay, given that trees sometimes give sanctuary to termites. But there's got to be other better options than cut down old trees that took years, even centuries, to grow. I believe pest extermination is in possession of some modern science that simplifies the process and saves trees using organic substances. An example is using orange oil and aloe vera to kill termites without harming plants or trees. See here for more.
Here in Project 8 (QC), there were a lot of patches of forests with tall trees and bamboos when I was a kid. The streets here used to be cool even at noon and early afternoons because of the shade alongside roads provided by huge fruit trees, especially mango and coconut. Every frontage, sidewalk and backyard were planted with trees. We enjoyed this for years until the condo and townhouse developers came in and cut all the vegetation, foliage, greenery and what-have-you. There was a huge, towering and beautiful Nara tree at our street corner where wild birds nested and tweeted sweet, early morning songs to the neighborhood and early morning joggers. Now, I terribly miss that tree. I'm not surprised why subdivisions are getting warmer.
Our neighborhood used to be a haven for fruit-bearing trees, especially mangoes, caimitos, and coconuts. There was even a big Duhat tree. We regularly snacked on them when we were kids and they were easily accessible because all backyards had some kind of thickets bearing local fruits. Now they're gone and all kids today know is snack on junkfood. Most condo and townhouse developers think of is make money out of subdivisions. Not all of them, but a lot are just business people who do not care one bit about the environment. As a result, it's becoming so hot here in our area.
It's so ugly how concrete jungles have cleared out tall trees so that today the only protection from fierce sunlight are what shadows tall buildings cast in the hot mornings and afternoons. But even if you have these protections, the concrete walls and slabs all around create oven-like conditions that keep heat in and circulating till early evening, making the air and wind hot. Trees can neutralize the hot atmosphere where gases are trapped and produce cooler air for us because of their natural transpirating cooling effect--fresh oxygen is produced in addition to the vapors released from the leaves, creating a surrounding of cooling and protective sheds, so to say.
Trees also cool the air by a process known as ‘transpiration cooling‘. As trees release water into the atmosphere from their leaves via transpiration, the surrounding air is cooled as water goes from liquid to a vapor. The process is similar to evaporation pads used to cool greenhouses — except in trees, water moves into the tree’s roots from the soil and travels through the tree’s water-conducting system, eventually being transpired from the leaves. The water that is released in its gas vapor form has a cooling effect on the surrounding air. Source.
It's deadly how the concrete jungle mixes with the fumes coming out of vehicles. The result is tripled incidence of asthma and other respiratory diseases in our time, some experts extrapolate. Fumes and other air pollutants can be neutralized if there are lots of big and spreading trees around, but some developers hate all these. They want all the trees out of their sights. They put down what God creates and puts up their creations in place of it.
They think planting lawn grass and small shrubberies will compensate for all the mature trees they have killed. There's one mini subdivision here where the streets are so cleared of any tree. The only green living things you see are the manicured grass and small flowering plants in pots. The whole place looks and feels so hot in the day and night time, especially during summer.
And what I hate most about concrete jungles is the fact that wild birds lose their natural habitat. There aren't many butterflies and bees either nowadays. When I was young, our place was practically a haven for droves of butterflies of all sizes, shapes, and colors, of grasshoppers, dragonflies, and even strange insects. Now they're all gone. There used to be lots of frogs and bats, too.
It used to be when you could walk the streets here comfortably even during hot noontime. All you had to do was seek refuge in tree sheds which were present outside each house you passed by. Today, you have to bring an umbrella, and even with that, the heat still pesters a lot, even threatening a sunstroke. I miss those trees very badly.
What Should We Do?
Plant trees again? Probably, for the next generation. It takes at least 10 years to grow a tree to full maturity. And by all means, let's STOP all senseless cutting of trees, especially mature ones. I miss that Nara tree at our street corner. And if you're buying a new house, opt out of those which senselessly cut all the trees. It's a way of protesting against concrete jungles. Let's boycott treeless real estate. It's a way of teaching senseless developers lessons--because they understand only the language of money and profits. If they lose sales because we refuse to buy properties in concrete jungles, they will change strategy and start to preserve mature trees.
To fight global warming locally, planting orchids and lawn grass and flowering plants in pots is NOT enough. What we need are full grown trees planted in our surroundings. We should wake up to the fact why subdivisions are getting warmer each time townhouse or condo units are put up. If not, what would happen to the lives of our kids in the future?
As Architecture students we were told to always consider counting the steps of our stairs when designing buildings. We must be particular that no step fell on mata when we checked the stair sequence using the oro, plata, mata formula. We were also reminded to consider superstitious beliefs of folks, like deciding where to face doors and windows and passageways.
Things like this--what others call feng shui considerations--are really the prerogative of the rich few. They are not Pinoy Architecture. As I have discussed in another article here, Pinoy Architecture should be defined more according to what the majority Filipinos--the masses--are apt to do with their houses and environs. Middle class and especially lower middle class Pinoys do not care about the number of steps they have at home, or where their doors and windows face. More so the marginally poor, the segment that dominates Filipino communities. As long as they have stairs to get them to the next higher floor, or doors to enter in and windows to get some air, they're content.
We should study these things more than pay much attention to construction superstitious beliefs that only a few care about. To really serve the greater majority--and formulate a truly Pinoy Architecture that masses of Pinoys really need--we should look for ways how to better improve what home features most Pinoys are limited to. We should conceptualize how to make them better, put some art into it, and offer it at a reasonable cost to them.
Have you been to really congested areas in the country where every nook and cranny is used up for residence purposes? If they have a mere 4X4 meter square area, they'd build a tall, lean tower of 5 to 6 floors on that space just to house all their family members and their furnishings in. Sometimes, they'd crowd in 5 to 6 different families there, with each family having some 5 to 6 members. An authentic Pinoy Architecture (HOUSEpinoy) should find ways to make this living condition better so that people would have more decent and comfy shelters.
How about feng shui considerations in design? Better yet, how about comfy considerations for the greater majority?
With the lack of space almost everywhere, townhouses are often faced with the problem of a windowless room. Some in the real estate business are businessmen, not real architectural designers, so they don't bother thinking about how to solve a windowless room. They just want to make the whole thing look beautiful to make it sellable.
A windowless room happens when all sides of a room is adjacent to another room or a dead end. It has no side facing an open area. What most developers do is put air-conditioning. Now, when a brownout happens, or when the air conditioning unit breaks down, that's the only time the owner realizes the flaw of the room, and it's too late to complain about it. What do we do?
For rooms already there, the best thing to do is install a blower getting air from another room that has an ample window. Blowers are better than electric fans. During a brownout, make sure the blower is operational other than by electricity. Power it with a generator or car battery. So, that's one way how to solve a windowless room.
If you don't like that, how about converting that room into a storage area and then having another room constructed elsewhere facing an open area? In Quezon City, I saw someone convert his garage into a room and park his car on the sidewalk just outside their house. The problem is if the subdivision management suddenly decides to ban parked vehicles in the streets at night.
If a windowless room faces a dead end, like the property line, you may opt to cut back a little from your room (something like 2X2 meters) just to provide space for an opening. Then you may place a window there. This works for both existing windowless rooms and rooms just about to be constructed. It's definitely a better way how to solve a windowless room.
Better yet, if you're still on planning stage and a windowless room seems inevitable, assign that room another function (like a storage or music room) and then construct your bedroom, in lieu of it, on a new floor. A better HOUSEpinoy tip. It's a little added expense, but you'd have better results than dealing with a windowless bedroom or converting your garage into your bedroom and kicking out your car into the streets.
We were surveying land in Indang, Cavite in 1993 and we stayed there for 5 days. Indang was an amazing town, still rustic at the time we were there, with some houses dating back to the Japanese occupation. We enjoyed visiting lots of pineapple plantation where very old huts and wooden houses still stood, some of them built even in Spanish times. I marveled at them.
We stayed in this old house, actually a two-level cabin, supposedly built during the Spanish occupation. The ground floor was of stone, the second floor of wood. The wood construction was fascinating. Everything was of dowel construction--no nails were used. Pretty much like tongue and groove construction. My engineer companion, owner of the ancestral house, told me to check for nailed joints, if I could see one. So I did.
I was so amazed! I didn't see any. It was my first time to see a house constructed without nails. Carpenters of old were experts at it, my engineer friend told me. The coming of the nail technology only made houses inferior, he added. I guess metal and wood don't mix well. They can only do temporarily, and sometimes with damaging effects eventually.
Dowel construction is an ingenious way of putting together construction members by means of dowels or wood pegs into holes in lieu of nails or screws. For instance, a hole is bored into member A. Member B is equipped with a dowel which is inserted into the hole made on member A. The fit must be accurate--not too loose, not too tight. The dowel is gradually inserted into the hole by gentle hammering, preferably with a rubber cushioned hammer head.
The cabin we stayed in was built near the end of the Spanish regime in the Philippines, almost during the American Period, but the house still stands firm. Even the window and door jambs, and the windows and doors themselves, were done using dowel construction. It was a shame that digital cameras were not yet around to take pictures of them.
Recently, I asked how the house was, and it's been dilapidated, one of the owners said. They might demolish everything and sell the property. I sighed deeply. I'm going to miss that house. I remember how it was awesome seeing its joints and frame members connected together by dowels. I never tired of looking at them.
Well, of course, the wood used then were sturdy and solid woods from mature timber. As I ran my fingers on the smooth wood surface, they felt like solid concrete. You can hardly make a dent or mark by scratching even with a sharp metal tool. It's near impossible to do the same construction quality now-a-days, my engineer friend opined. But I sure would like to own a mountain cabin made using dowel construction.
Later, I also saw furniture made on the spot without nails. Also jambs and doors and windows. Only dowels and tongues and grooves were used. It's fascinating to see carpenters use manual labor to make accurate dowels and holes to fit them in. No electric drills or anything like that.
Construction using welding is also good, so is the use of nails and screws, but I'd rather have my house done with the wood dowel system--if I had the money for it. There's a touch of mystery and history about houses of dowels, old or new.
Despite the lack of space and limited budget, Pinoys are still able to build nice and cozy houses with fascinating interior designs. The first thing I take note when visiting homes is the spiritual ambiance, and then the ingenuity of the house design. Not just the design per se but the mood the design puts on you. It's easy to come up with good house designs. But I like watching how limited conditions were remedied with ingenuity and artistry, resulting in a nice and practical architecture. To me that's Philippine Architecture.
I also like seeing grand and posh edifices which people have come to know as Philippine Architecture. Master pieces of the renowned Pinoy masters. But what I like better is how Pinoys solve habitat problems, and habitat is not just house design but life that happens inside, and revolves around, the place of habitat. Things like family, religion, tradition, customs, spirit and character, relations, intimacy, neighborhood camaraderie (or kapitbahay culture) and the like, aside from the usual challenges in design like space, circulation, movement, and of course, the ubiquitous budget challenges. All that is Pinoy architectural ingenuity.
Like the extended family. A lot of people insinuate the impropriety of extended families, how one property should be habited by one family only, and that being the practice in the US, Pinoy families should follow suit. But like it or not, Pinoy family is often extended. That's how the typical family here is, at least at the grassroots. The wealthy minority can afford the 1:1 ratio, but that's not the "typical" Pinoy family. Being wealthy is not typical here. Grassroots is the typical.
But I do understand 1:1 advocates, those that espouse one house to one family. They'd rather preserve houses in their original look than have them extending yearly to give way to an expanding family. But Pinoy architectural ingenuity is exactly that attitude of inclusiveness, expressing itself in an inherent architectural character of ingenious and exhaustive space utility with extreme budget stretches. That's very Pinoy.
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The kapitbahay culture is something other countries, especially the developed ones, cannot replicate, even in their Filipino communities. The culture is almost exclusive to the Philippines, finding something similar to it in other Asian countries. In few developing countries like the Philippines can this culture thrive because we have a lot of free time--we are genuinely freedom loving people. Free time with loved ones is so important to us which few companies here appreciate. And true Pinoy architectural ingenuity should always have the kapitbahay culture, or neighborhood camaraderie.
I love seeing this Pinoy culture blending with Pinoy life in Pinoy neighborhoods and homes, sometimes even given leeway in raw, innate, and unsophisticated architectural designs. Have you seen how houses are interconnected by alleys and narrow passages (iskinita) or secret rooms? Or family or clan houses clustered in compounds? I've seen how houses are so closely built together that residents on the second floor cross over to the other houses by merely stepping out of their windows, walking on a roof and then into their neighbor's window. It seems crude and ridiculous, but if given enough study, philosophy, and art--or sophistication, in other words--it can turn out a good, even modern 21st century, architectural design uniquely Pinoy.
It's like football, or baseball, or soccer. They seem classy sports to play because of their sophistication, with uniforms, gears, rules and teams. But you strip them of their complexities and you'd find them no different from our native piko or shato or patintero. If we just love our Pinoy-ness more and give our native games more study, philosophy, organization and art (give it uniforms, rules, playing field, showbiz backing, and commercial sponsors), they'd easily rank with internationally acclaimed sports like basketball. The same is true with Pinoy architectural ingenuity--and Filipino martial arts.
Some people say our crude construction methods are only good for squatter colonies. They say we should learn how to build properly. By how to build properly, they mean doing what they see westerns are doing. Well, that's western, and they have indeed brought western architecture to the Philippines. But that will never amount to a Pinoy architecture. Because Pinoy architecture will always be defined by what the greater masses of Pinoys are building in their country. Just like how new Filipino words are added to the language. When a word is used widely by the masses, it is added in our dictionary.
I hope, one day, somebody would come up with the idea of giving more study, philosophy, and art to authentic Pinoy architectural ingenuity, which is grassroots and with a kapitbahay culture.
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