The bahay kubo is a traditional Philippine house made of natural materials like bamboo, nipa palm leaves, and wood. It is a single-room structure used for multiple purposes like living, cooking, and sleeping. Basic features include a hipped roof, bamboo walls and floors, and an enclosed space below used for storage or animals. Over time, additions like galleries, kitchens, and second levels were made as families grew or prospered. While evolving, the bahay kubo has retained its fundamental design and role as the basic Filipino home.
The bahay kubo is a traditional Philippine house made of natural materials like bamboo, nipa palm leaves, and wood. It is a single-room structure used for multiple purposes like living, cooking, and sleeping. Basic features include a hipped roof, bamboo walls and floors, and an enclosed space below used for storage or animals. Over time, additions like galleries, kitchens, and second levels were made as families grew or prospered. While evolving, the bahay kubo has retained its fundamental design and role as the basic Filipino home.
The bahay kubo is a traditional Philippine house made of natural materials like bamboo, nipa palm leaves, and wood. It is a single-room structure used for multiple purposes like living, cooking, and sleeping. Basic features include a hipped roof, bamboo walls and floors, and an enclosed space below used for storage or animals. Over time, additions like galleries, kitchens, and second levels were made as families grew or prospered. While evolving, the bahay kubo has retained its fundamental design and role as the basic Filipino home.
a vernacular word for house. On the other hand, kubo is mistakenly thought for the longest time by architectural historians as the translation of the Spanish word cubo meaning cube because of the obvious overall cubic geometry – the height of the walls equals its width. Contrary to this, the word kubo already appears among early versions of Tagalog (Fr. Pedro De San Buenaventura’s Vocabulario de Lengua Tagalog) and Kapampangan dictionaries (Fr. Diego Bergaño’s Vocabulario dela Lengua Pampanga en Romance) in the 16th century. The Tagalog kobo refers to mountain houses. The Kapampangan kúbu, on the other hand, is synonymous to balungbung (Kapampangan word for hut, cabin or lodge); cuala, saung and dangpa (Kapampangan word for sheperd’s hut or hovel, dampa of the Tagalogs). Usually owned by peasant families and other low income groups, the bahay kubo has been described as an idyll of peace and bucolic prosperity in the middle of the fields, as portrayed in the popular Tagalog folk song of same name. Depending on the ecology of the vicinity, the bahay kubo may be constructed from various kinds of botanic materials such as wood, rattan, cane, bamboo, anahaw, nipa, bark, or cogon. Nipa (Nipa fruticans) is the widely used material; thus, the bahay kubo is also referred to as nipa hut. Bamboo (Schizostachyum lumampao) is also used as a major material for the construction of the house because of its availability and flexibility. The inherent toughness of the bamboo can only yield to a sharp blade. Its extensive use could be connected to the coming of iron and tools in the Philippine cultural history, which dates around 200 BC. The posts of the nipa hut mark out a 3 m x 2.5 m area and carries a hipped roof. Hardwood, particularly molave (Vitex geniculata), is the favored material for the post, but bamboo is more prevalent. The tiebeams ascend some 2 m above the room floor. Forming the roof are four-corner rafters and two rows of minor rafters that together carry a ridgepole. Four poles delineate the roof’s perimeter. Bamboo composes the roof frame and the many slats lining across the rafters. Structural segments are tied together with strips of rattan (Calamus). Onto the bamboo skeleton, shingles of nipa (Nipa fruticans) or cogon (Imperata cylindrica) are bound in dense rows. Other materials alternatively used for roof shingles are anahaw palm (Livistona rotundifolia) and sugar palm (Arenga pinnata). Beams perpendicularly traversing each other and lashed to the post, 1-2 m above the ground, support the bamboo joist, which in turn holds up a bamboo slatted floor. This type of floor allows the circulation of air and light and renders for easy cleaning as dirt and dust fall directly to the space underneath. A floor sill supports the bamboo frames of the exterior walls. The bamboo frames are then fastened at the corners rather than directly to the house post. Wall sidings may be of nipa or sawali ; the latter uses bamboo that has been split, flattened and cut into strips woven together in herringbone design. The sawali virtually makes the house a penetrable basket propped by poles. Windows of the awning-type have a nipa or palm window lid that can either slide from side to side, or be pushed out by a pole that serves also as support when not in use. There are usually no ceilings or room divisions. However, if required, room partitions are quite low and do not reach the underside of the roof or the ceiling, if there is any, to allow for free circulation of air within the house. Sawali walls may divide the interior space into rooms with open doorways. The lower part of the house, called silong , is used as an enclosure for keeping domestic animals such as swine and fowl, and as a storage for household implements, goods, crops, and, in some cases, as burial ground for the dead. The upper floor, where the inhabitants live, consists of the most essential compartments – a single area serving all purposes, 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 balkon or batalan, respectively. When found at the front, the gallery serves as an anteroom or lounging area. When located at the rear, it is used for keeping the banga (water jar), or for bathing. As the household expands, or as it becomes wealthier, extensions (a bigger batalan) 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 bangguera, a hanging slatted rack for drying dishes and kitchen utensils. The nipa hut has evolved, but its basic elements have been retained. However, the dwelling forms and residential patterns have been outwardly modified and elaborated upon. At present, the idea of a bahay kubo still connotes a one-room but multi-functional abode. The open space in the one- room structure can be transformed into different spaces at different times of the day: living, dining, bedroom, and kitchen. It is also common to see an altar of religious icons and photos of deceased family members, adorned by some candles, flowers, and in a few instances, filled with fruits and other offerings. In the most bi-level houses, the living area, kitchen and dining room are defined on the ground level while the bedroom is located on the second level. These low levels may be connected by a door without a swing board and may be provided with four-step stairs at the top of which is a sagang , a barrier to prevent children from falling. Some houses have no furnishings except a few functional devices such as the papag or built-in bed, a dulang or low table, a bangko or bench, bamboo grilles, and the sala-sala or bamboo latticework. The typical Filipino house or the bahay kubo is consequence of centuries of evolution. Some Hispanic influences are evident, such as the altar niche for the villager’s santos . Originally the empty floor space and a low table called the dulang were used for sitting and dining; later a built-in long bench of split bamboo called the papag was introduced, along with tables and other furnishings obligated by Hispanized domestic practices. Although commonly claimed to be of Hispanic influence, the silid or kuwarto (room), where the women of the house could change clothes in private, seems to have been present prior to Hispanization, as evidenced by early chroniclers like Fray Francisco de San Juan Antonio, who provides a detailed description of a nipa hut with interior partitions.