SPACED OUT Under one roof

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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