musings on green building and the new (non-romantic) indigenous

For relaxing times, make it bahay-kubo times.

Green building is at its infancy in the Philippines.

Not entirely true though. Unlike many developed countries, we do not have to look to our history books for several prototypes of energy-efficient, well-lit, low-impact (or positive-impact) houses made from local materials.



"Together we will transform the market", a pragmatic approach to changing a slow and gigantic industry. At the recent Building Green exhibit in Glorietta held by the Philippine Green Building Council.

Rural areas are still dotted with bahay kubo, bahay na bato, and other forms of homes that have been eschewed in city centers in favor of the boxier, stuffier, and less attractive energy-sucking buildings. Of course, there are many modern green buildings using non-renewable materials, those are excellent, but I want to focus on our homegrown examples.

Many new real estate developments lure people with promises of homes that are "Tuscan" or "from the French countryside". Often a trip down one such gated community makes you feel like you're in a parallel universe, only it's Disneyland-- completely artificial and slightly comical. Visit the same place again four years later and you will find that our tropical forces have weathered the materials down, the paint is peeling off, weeds are growing where they are supposed to grow, etc.


Live like a king in Versailles, Alabang. Wait, there is no more king in Versailles, engots.

Not romanticism, but practicality, should motivate our consumers, architects, and contractors to examine our living testaments of thousands of years of evolution, as they are a valuable source of ideas and information. First of all, they have evolved to fit our unique context and resources, with regional variations adapted to suit further nuances. Second, they are a peek into a structure created before the oiliness of the past few generations. Third, other countries are taking the lead in promoting use of "updated" versions of our materials, we should join in on the action. Fourth, it sucks to live in a city where ventilation is endangered.

Augusto Villalon, a longtime voice of sustainable architecture and heritage, outlines very briefly evolution of building in the Philippines. Sadly, after World War II, constructions no longer reflected context. The now-ubiquitous structures with little lighting and circulation (think hellish office), and completely dependent on air-conditioning are obviously no longer built with lessons from indigenous architecture.

Materials

When I talk of indigenous, I don't mean the romanticized nativeness, but appropriate. Before dirty energy became cheap, lives were dictated by the unique materials, resources, and climate of their regions. In this way, they were appropriate, not (always) trying to be different, but just being practical. They lived the smarter way, less dependent on outside resources. There was a time when materials self-sufficiency was sometimes present at a family level!


Bamboo is used only to make scaffolding at the big, dark monster that is the Pasay City Hall.

These days, there are contentions with using formerly appropriate materials. Apparently, for most people, nipa, cogon, bamboo, wood, and other renewable materials have become too costly to use and continually replace. Materials that were once cheap (or free) are now unreasonable. Instead of making people change their minds and turn to using imports, let's ask ourselves why it has become expensive to build local.

Our tropical environment is one of much life and quick cycles. Materials enjoy speedy and abundant growth (but the weather decomposes them inevitably at faster rates than in temperate countries). You can see it as a curse, or an advantage. It's really only a curse when you don't have the foresight to grow a replacement set of materials once your old one goes away. Then, in effect, you are not harvesting materials, but mining them.

The New Indigenous

To survive this era, our generation has the unique challenge of opening up and re-localizing simultaneously. New ideas are being created and shared around the world at an unprecedented rate. On the other hand, we are faced with dwindling resources and a risk of homogenization.

The New Indigenous requires openness to ideas, as well as the intelligence to filter out those that don't make sense in the local context (old practices notwithstanding). The New Indigenous isn't against the modern-- he/she just believes that all the diversity of climate, terrain and culture in the world cannot result in just one or two ways of building and living. The New Indigenous is after an appropriate version of modernity.

As our soft human flesh calls for protection, shelter was the obvious answer, and our homes become extensions of ourselves. Not to be alarmist, but if we find ourselves in a time when imports are too expensive, and local materials are destroyed... do you want to be caught naked in the rain? (Don't answer that question :).)

Links:
How green is my building?
Is there a Modern Filipino style?
Cradle to Crade Design