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Bamboo
 house are built not by
architects, but by the people who will live in them. They are built by the community that will live around them.
“Folk houses are not the product of any theory
design, but instinct, intuition, common sense and
communal memory. Their
form has been defined by climate, site, purpose,
available materials, building technology, historical
experience and world view.”
Because bamboo demands its own
craftsman, not all carpenters can build a bamboo house.
A nail hastily placed will splinter the whole culm, and
only experience gives the eye that can pick a mature
reliable bamboo post.
And what sort of knowledge is it that enables a
builder to construct a house without a meter stick and
yet cut eloquent proportions on a wonderfully human
scale? The
bamboo itself becomes the means measure – the nodes on
a fully-grown bamboo are evenly spaced – and the
builder uses it with an skilled eye and a seasoned hand.
Within the basic traditional
structure of the bamboo house the builder /owner is free
to innovate, to amend features to fit the way he or his
family lives. He may bring new materials, alter patterns, modify features,
augments, embellish, enhance. Form follow function, but
function follows form as well, and in constructing the
house is always open-ended. A project never really
finished, because when the bamboo gives way or need
changing, parts of the house can be replaced, reworked,
redesigned to accommodate changing needs.
It has been called the ideal house
for the tropics, but is the bamboo house passing away?
Not entirely, though the of life for which the bahay
kubo evolved is itself becoming a thing of the past.
A dwindling supply of bamboo has also contributed
to its diminished use as building material.
But true to its nature, the bamboo
house is adapting to the needs of its owners.
Where there is need for permanence, builders sink
concrete foundation to keep at bay moisture and insects
that shorten the life of a bamboo post.
Tiles or galvanized iron replace the nipa
roof. Screens
are installed in windows to keep out bugs.
And researchers and technicians have developed a
board consisting of bamboo sandwiched in layers of a
resin as an alternative to plywood.
Whatever form the new bamboo house takes, we must
hope that the common experience of building and the
communal memory of living will continue to inspire a
dwelling as suitable to the new way of life, as charming
and distinctive, as our bamboo house.
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