Philippine architecture covers a myriad of expressions, forms, types, styles, and periods. Its primeval expression resided in nature. For the early Filipinos who were defenseless before the violence of wind and rain, the cave was a refuge, a place of dwelling. For the most part, the said shelter had always been there, ready for use. but it needed to be reclaimed and made safe from predators.
Constructing cave dwellings only required minimal site work and modification, as the shelters took advantage of the structural properties of earth or rock formation in the caverns. The earliest dwellers of caves in the Philippines were the Pleistocene people, offsprings of the Ice Age. Perhaps the largest cave dwelt in by prehistoric families periodically for 30,000 years is the Tabon Cave complex in southwest Palawan.
It is 138 hectares. of rugged cliffs and deep slopes. The cliffs and slopes around the area are punctured with more than 200 caverns. There are other examples of cave shelters and rock-hewn architecture that were once inhabited by early Filipinos.
The petroglyphs in a rock shelter in Angono Rizal provides evidence of the ancient Filipino's effort to embellish his habitation. The mountaintop citadels of Savidug Batanes, known as Idjang, is a testimony to the sophisticated defensive engineering of the early Ivatan settlers who carved the hard limestone formation to create vertical walls. Emerging from the caves, our ancestors initiated the first architectural revolution with the invention of stone tools for cutting fibrous materials, plant stems, and wood.
A fibro-constructive technology. This technology helped develop the temporary tent-like shelters made of wooden skeleton and vegetative or animal skin. In the Philippines, this fundamental act of building is epitomized by the lintu windbreak, or the windscreen, which is structurally anchored by a pole or stick at an angle on the ground. The lintu is the early dwelling of the Aita.
This transient architecture is an inalienable aspect of their nomadic lifestyle. Another architectural institution fashioned by nature is the arboreal shelter or the tree house. Tree houses are usually found in areas where violent intertribal conflict and doctrinal raids are frequent.
These houses are perched in the forked branches of trees 20 or 40 or even 60 feet above the ground to protect residents from animals and human enemies. The rice terraces of the Cordilleras is a masterpiece of pre-modern engineering and megalithic architecture, altered by human hands to accommodate pond field agriculture. The original landscape was once covered with woodland. The amount of stones used by the Ifugao in constructing the system of stone walls canals, dams, reservoirs of the terraces is estimated to far exceed in bulk those used in building the pyramids or the Great Wall of China.
The terrace network spans the provinces of Cordillera's mountain province, including Ifugao, Bontoc, Kalinga, and areas of Abra. The walls reach up to a height of 6 meters, and in some cases 16 meters configured in a range of shape and gradient. Every terrace construction in the Ifugao Highlands contains three basic elements.
The terrace base, the embankment, and the soil body. The cultures of Southeast Asia are descended from a common ancestry based on affiliation with the Austronesian family of language. The Austronesian culture is characterized by a worldview defined by a water-born lifestyle, which manifests itself in the vernacular architecture. In the Philippines, this architecture professes a strong allegiance to a greater Austronesian building heritage.
The archetypal Austronesian house consists of an architectural system of a raised wooden structure, typically consisting of a rectangular structure elevated on posts with a thatched pitch roof. These architectural features are contingent on a monsoonal and aquatic-based way of life, as settlement patterns have a direct connection to bodies of water. Because water is a means of transportation, communities were developed along sheltered bays, coastal areas and mouths, of rivers. The features of Austronesian dwelling are best embodied by the baje-kopo. The term translates literally to cube house, suggesting that the height of the wall is equal to its width.
The house posts mark out an approximately square interior space. The lineal dimension is 3 to 4 meters. The house is constructed using wooden structural components configured in the post and lintel framework supporting a steeply pitched thatched roof.
The dwelling is distinguished by a living floor raised on sturdy stilt foundations, with a voluminous well-ventilated roof cavity above, providing a straightforward solution to the environmental problems imposed by the humid tropical climate with seasonal monsoon rains. Pile foundations have several advantages in a tropical climate. Piles raise the living floor above the mud and flood waters, which occur during seasonal monsoon rains, while providing excellent underfloor ventilation in hot weather.
The underfloor space, known as silung, is often used for storage or as a corral for domestic animals. It can also provide a shaded daytime workspace for tasks such as weaving and basketry. In many areas, house posts simply rest on top of foundation stones rather than being driven directly into the ground. This ensures that the building has enough flexibility to survive earthquakes in this seismically active region. At the same time, should one wish to move house, the entire structure can literally be picked up and carried to a new site.
Until recently, these houses were constructed entirely of botanic building materials, timber, bamboo, thatch, and fibers, assembled without the use of nails. A quintessential method of construction is exemplified by vertical house posts and horizontal tie beams that provide a load-bearing structure to which floors, walls, and roof are later attached. The main framework, usually a box frame, is fabricated using sophisticated jointing techniques, while the walls, roof, and other non-load-bearing elements are typically secured by wooden pegs and vegetative fiber lashing. The frame is usually first put together on the ground and then taken apart to be reassembled again in a place on top of the posts.
The walls of vernacular structures are made of light windscreen, which provides protection from the elements and secures privacy for the residents. The walls may consist of matting, palm leaves folded round a lath, and stitched together with a strip of rattan, flattened or plated bamboo panels, as well as wooden boards and panels, depending on the use and status of the building. in the bai kubo wall sidings may be of nipa or sawali the sawali uses bamboo that has been split flattened and cut into strips that are woven together in herringbone design which makes the house like a basket windows of the awning type have nipa or palm window-lid that can either slide from side to side or be pushed out by a pole.
There are usually no ceilings or room divisions. Sawali walls may divide the interior space into rooms with open doorways. Internally, the raised floor consists of the most essential compartments, a single multifunctional space whose use transforms throughout the day to fit the daily routine of the household, or a two to three unit quarter consisting of a living and sleeping area, a kitchen or storage room, and an open gallery at the front or rear of the house, called balcon or batalan, respectively.
The gallery serves as an anteroom or lounging area. When located at the rear, it is used for keeping water jars or used as a place for bathing. As the household members increase or when the family ascends the social ladder, extensions are added to the basic form of the house. Behind the house near the batalan is a kitchen which has a separate roof and window with a hanging slatted rack called bangera for drying dishes and kitchen utensils. The liquid kitchen slop is poured through the interstices of the split bamboo lath floor.
The most distinctive feature of the Austronesian vernacular architectural form is the extended line of the roof, often with outward sloping gables forming elegant saddleback curves. Although Philippine vernacular houses generally lack the graceful curve characteristic of the saddleback roofs of the architecture of the Minangkabau in Sumatra, their hip Roof roofs are closely related to the saddleback type. As in most Southeast Asia, the roof is the dominant architectural feature of most dwellings. In some cases, the house is mostly a roof, as seen in the pyramidal roof of an Ifugao dwelling and an older bahai-kubo. Vernacular dwellings are thatched, a generic name for any roof covering made of dead plant material other than wood.
Grasses and palm leaves are the most widely used traditional materials. Despite its combustibility, thatch is watertight and may last more than a century when effectively laid out so that water runs off the entire surface consistently. Cross-gable finials, which hold the rafters together at the ridge, are an ever-present feature of Southeast Asian roofs. The ornamented ones are made by crossed poles that meet at the apex of the roof. Although the Taosug Sungan roof is decorated at either end of the house, by a horn or crescent-shaped tadyuk pasung, which is usually a stylized manuk-manuk or bird or naga or dragon design with swirling fern-like ukil carving.
The naga, Sanskrit for serpent, represents the Austronesian cosmological model in many Philippine Islamic artifacts as well as the universality of water in the daily life of Asia. Pacific. In the monsoon-beaten Botanus Islands, the dwellings are designed and built not only to withstand the battering of the most severe of storms, sea sprays, gusts and rains. They are also built to overcome devastating earthquakes. With knowledge of processing lime for building, the Ivatans are able to construct their more familiar houses made of stone and mortar known as calicanto.
The most common type is a one-story house with a partially submerged basement used as storage referred to as sinadumparan or maituab. depending on the roof configuration. Two-story houses are called raku. Very thick stone and lime masonry are topped with gable or hip roof.
An elaborately crafted truss system with a combination of bamboo, reed, rattan, and kogan roof cover. Wooden post and lintel frameworks are implanted in the walls. A meter-thick kogon thatch, vurid, sharply slopes down and is heavily fastened onto a ceiling.
The fourth windowless wall faces the direction of the strongest typhoon winds as the house is oriented north-south. A big roof called panpeh, made of strong ropes, fastened securely to the ground via strong pegs or large stone anchors, is thrown over the entire roof during typhoons. In the altitudes of the mountain province, the vernacular houses, although varying in size and shape, were designed primarily to shield the cold weather. William Henry Scott classifies houses in these highland regions into the northern and southern strains. The northern strain consists of houses made by the Isneg and Kalinga, while the southern strain are houses constructed by the Ifugao, Montauk, Ibaloi and Kankana'i.
Houses of the northern strain are characterized by a rectangular plan covered by a high gable roof. The roof framing is independent of the floor framework, and the floor and all of its legs can be removed, leaving the roof still upright, or vice versa. An example is the Isneg house called Binurun.
with its floor and roof supported by completely different sets of posts. The squarish house elongates into a rectangle with a roof that is bowed into the shape of a boat turned upside down. The adoption of boat architecture in the design of the house may be attributed to the fact that the Isneg's domain is the only region in the Cordillera with a navigable river and a boat building tradition.
The Kalinga construct octagonal houses having three divided floorings, the center being the lowest. The Kalinga dwelling is the only Philippine vernacular form that assumes an eight-sided plan. Generally, the Cordillera houses at the southern strain have square plans with either a pyramidal or conical roof. resting on the top of the walls of the house. The house is a box supported by posts reaching no higher than the floor joints.
The windowless Ifugao house, or phale for instance, appears to be a pyramid of thatch resting on four posts. The Ifugao house is in fact a three-level structure. The first level consists of the stone pavement, whose perimeter coincides with the edge of the eaves, posts, and girders.
A wooden cylindrical disc, the halipan, or rat guard, is fitted on each of the four posts, rising 1.2 to 1.8 meters from the ground. The second level is the house cage, consisting of the room, frame, walls and floor, and encloses a floor area of about 12 to 15 square meters. The interior walls incline to give a spherical dimension inside. The pyramidal roof protected with layers of thatch constitutes the third level. Although the Ifugao process of house building may take as long as two years, the house, mostly of hand-hewn wood, may be assembled and dismantled within a day.
Islam was established in Sulu in the 14th century and in the rest of Mindanao in the 15th century. Being a religion based on congregational worship, it required a permanent and separate architecture. Two types of mosques developed in the Philippines, the masjid and the smaller langgal in Tausog and Yakan, or ranggar in Maranao.
The masjid is associated with any place of worship that includes a bulbous dome and a minaret as an architectural element. Unlike the langal, it is a large and more permanent structure built on stone foundations, often to be found near a river or a body of water, where the faithful perform rituals of ablution. On the other hand, the langgal, which means to meet, refers to a small prayer house built with light and semi-permanent materials. The langgal is found mostly in rural areas for the convenience of the worshippers who live far from the masjid. The masjid was originally a multi-tiered...
bamboo or wooden structure reminiscent of the Chinese pagoda or the Javanese temple, with a roof consisting of three ascending layers of flared pyramidal roofs separated by gaps to allow direct air and light into the building. The oldest standing mosque in the Philippines, found in Tubig Indangan Simunul Island, Tawi-Tawi, is a prototype of the multi-layered roof of the pagoda-style mosque with a square plan. This mosque, built in 1380 under the auspices of Sheikh Karim ul-Mahdoum, has undergone several reconstructions. Only the huge ipil posts remain from the original structure.
Later mosques were rendered in a style approximating Middle Eastern models. This mosque style, built of reinforced concrete, features an onion-shaped dome on squinches and tall minarets. Arabic geometric designs and Quranic inscription have replaced the traditional okir designs in some mosques.
The Golden Mosque in Quiapo, Manila, notable for its gilded dome, combines modern mosque design with stylized and colorful Maranao-Oquirr patterns, and, like all mosques, is oriented towards Mecca. The geographic features of Sulu and Mindanao have encouraged both terrestrial and naval architecture. The houses in different Muslim societies in southern Philippines are categorized into three.
Land-based stilted dwellings situated along the shoreline, oceanic stilt, dwellings, built completely over the sea and entirely detached from the shoreline, and the houseboat, which is both home and fishing boat. Samal houses are supported by piles. driven deep enough for structural anchorage into the reef floor. The houses are linked together to the shore and to one another by a network of catwalks and bridges of timber and split bamboo. The elevation of the house must depend on the maximum high tide level in order to allow the storage of the outrigger boat underneath the house when not in use.
For the Tao Tzu, the construction of the house entails the reenactment of their Genesis myth. The erection of nine posts is sequenced according to the order of how the human body was supposedly created. The post at the center, representing the navel, is the first to be erected, while the other eight posts that represent... parts of the human anatomy are placed on the perimeter within a specific orientation.
Adherence to such sequence are believed to guarantee the sturdiness of the house and the safety of its occupants. The Taosug house, or the Baisinug, is a single-room partitionless structure, equipped with a porch and a separate kitchen. A distinguishing feature of the house is the carved wooden finials, the tadyuk pasong, placed at one or both ends of the ridge of the gable, or hipped roof.
The Yagan house, called luma, is a rectangular ridge-roofed single-room pile structure raised two meters from the ground. The luma has three parts, the kokan or tindakan, the main house, the kusina or kitchen, and the pantan or simpe or porch, the steep pitch roof. Sapiao is concave and is thatched with either kogon or nipa. By tradition, the Bajaus are maritime wanderers, constantly roving across the channels of Tawi-Tawi in groups, aboard their houseboats. although some have opted to settle on land and use their boats only for fishing a houseboat has a life span of ten to fifteen years structurally a single beam forms the bottom and wooden boards form the body the interior of the houseboat is divided into three major zones for sleeping cooking and fishing tools.
The boat is balanced by an outrigger, or katig, which is anchored to the main structure by a bow-like wooden frame called batangan. With the death of the family head, the boat is transformed into a coffin. The most prominent of the Maranao architecture is the Torogan, the ornate ancestral residence of the Datu and his extended family.
Literally a place for sleeping, the Torogan is raised two meters above the ground by posts. numbering as many as 25, some of which are non-load-bearing. At the facade, huge tree trunks are used as posts.
Since the land is prone to earthquake, the timber posts are not buried into the ground, but stood on rounded boulders which act as rollers that allow the structure to sway with the earth's movements. Furthermore, these boulders prevent direct contact of the post with the ground, preventing the wood from rotting or being attacked by termites. the posts at the faade are usually carved and decorated with okir motifs and occasionally contoured like chess pieces the noticeable external feature of the torogan is the decorative panolong a wing-like triangular housebeam elaborated by paco rabong or fern designs or naga motif evoking the buoyant appearance of a royal vessel. The motifs are chiseled in high relief and painted with bright hues. The side strips, facade panels, and window frames are lavished in the same fashion.
Another example of a communal architecture is the Tiboli Gunubong, found in the Lake Cebu area of South Cotabato. Like the Maranao Torogan, it is home to an extended family averaging between eight to sixteen persons. Bamboo stilts or timber poles support the house. two meters from the ground with additional poles on the sides to keep it stable.
Tree stumps are also used as post for the inner portion of the house. These are laid out on a rectangular plan approximately 14 meters long by 8 to 9 meters wide. The lower central space is thus integrated with the elevated side areas, the area of honor, the sleeping areas, and the vestibule. The Gunubong is capped by a thatched gable roof, which is not very steep.
Vernacular architecture is a broad category, denoting indigenous, ethnic, or traditional architecture. Majority of vernacular built forms are dwellings, whether permanent or makeshift, constructed by their owners, by communities, or by local craftsmen. Granaries, fortifications, places of worship, ephemeral and portable structures, and contemporary urban shanties all belong to the vernacular lineage. Undeniably, the vernacular architectural tradition is an omnipresent building practice in the country.
and remains an accessible architectural idiom to the majority of Filipinos.