Spanish Colonial Interior

Design: A Case Study of

Bahay-na-Bato
Prof. Rondell C. Gascon, MAURP
Philippine Art and Design History

Interior design
a practice concerned with anything that is found
inside a space - walls, windows, doors, finishes,
textures, light, furnishings and furniture. All of these
elements are used by interior designers to develop the
most functional space for a building's users.

Bahay-na-Bato

Features of Bahay na Bato

Juan Lunas Tampuhan

The interior of Bahay na Bato

Zaguan

The Zaguan, from an Arabic term meaning "passageway", is the

ground floor space of the house, normally having several rooms
which served as storage for carrozas, grain harvest, and old
furniture.
It is through the Zaguan that the carruajes entered, dropping off
passengers by the stairs.
A huge Puerta Mayor with smaller Postigos leads guests into the
zaguan

Entresuelo
The word Entresuelo literally
means between floors.
This is the area where clients,
tenants or estate managers (if
the owner was a rich
landowner) wait before being
admitted to the oficina (office).

Despacho or Oficina
This is where the owner of the
house conducted business
together with his clerks or
accountants. Much of the
furniture here are locally made.
One finds indigenous motifs
such as the lubi-lubi (life plant)
carved on the legs of the
partner's desk.

Cuartos
Rooms in the entresuelo can serve
various purposes.
They may be used by the owners when
they take their siesta (nap) between
two o'clock and five o'clock in the
afternoon. It is cooler here in the
afternoons.
The Filipino family is quite extended.
More often than not, an unmarried
aunt or uncle lived with the nuclear
family, not to mention the
grandmother and the grandfather.
They may occupy the bedrooms in the
entresuelo

The Caida or
Antesala
The caida (from the Spanish word "caer" meaning to drop or to let fall) is
the traditional receiving area, where women would let fall of the hemlines
and trains of their saya (long skirts), which they clip as they navigate the
staircase.
The antesala (anteroom) is also called caida. Probably from the Spanish
caer (to fall). During the day, the family uses the area for playing parlor
games, entertaining close friends, or having merienda (mid-morning or
afternoon snack).

Sala Mayor

The Sala Mayor is a place for parties known as tertulias. Its

decoration takes influence from the Spanish ayuntamiento.
The chairs and tables were made of light materials that can
be moved to the sides during tertulias or dances.
Planks of the local hardwoods balayong and narra compose
the woodworks which cannot be pierced by ordinary nails.
Pegs, dowels, and tongue-and-groove were used to secure
the wood in place.

Sala or Sala Menor

Very important people are
entertained in the sala (living
room). This is therefore decorated
to show off one's status in society.
Tertulias and bailes (dances) are
held here. Held in the late
afternoon, tertulias had the young
ladies of the house singing or
playing the piano. There is also
dancing and poetry reading. Older
people discuss the latest in politics,
business, fashion, etc.

Oratorio
The family gathers in the oratorio
every night to pray the Angelus and
the rosary. Some recite all the fifteen
Mysteries followed by novenas to
saints, prayers for the dead, etc.
Large santos (religious icons) kept
in glass cabinets are often found in
the homes of prominent families.
These are usually brought out and
robed, sometimes made up (with
cosmetics), for annual town
processions dedicated to the patron
saint.

Blue Room
The wall paintings are taken from
Pompeiian motifs of the neoClassical style. This style began in
Europe during the late 18th century.
Its influence was felt in the
Philippines from the early 19th
century onwards. It is usual for old
homes to have connecting doors
between bedrooms. Privacy is not of
primary importance to family life.

Cuarto Principal
The aparador de tres lunas (armoire with three sections),
the tremor (dresser with swinging full-length mirror), and
the lavabo (washstand) of marble were status symbols
then.
Filipino hospitality dictated that the master offer his room
to important guests staying overnight.

Comedor

Crystal chandeliers hung low from the ceiling over the dining
table while aparadores for the crystal, silver and chinaware
stand against the walls.
Punkahs or ceiling cloth fans hung low at both sides of the
chandelier, which a servant used to pull with a long cord as her
masters were dining-in.

Cocina

The cocina is
sometimes a
separate structure
from the house
because it is
considered a fire
hazard. It is
connected to the
house by a
causeway. The
cocina is an area
for activities such
as cooking, grain
pounding and
clothes ironing.

Bao
The bathroom contains two sizes of baeras (bathtubs).
These usually large bathtubs are made of stoneware from
China. Houses of the affluent class have many servants (at
least twenty).
The master just sits in the tub while the servants pour
water. After bathing, the servants unplug the cork from the
tubs, draining the water to the floor.

Azotea
Activities requiring plenty of water such as the laundry is
done near the water source, the aljibe (water cistern).
Butchering pigs or chickens for family meals is also done
here.
Rainwater collected from the roof gutters is collected
through the stone column which led to a filter of layered
charcoal, gravel and sand, and then to the cistern.

Smaller houses as well as palaces or buildings were

built around a patio, usually colonnaded and with
modelled or carved friezes, columns, and bracket
capitals.
Window grilles, or rejas, often form an important
part of the decorative scheme, the ironwork being
traditionally of a high degree of excellence. Love of
closely patterned decoration, enveloping all surfaces
that could easily be carved or modelled, is an
important characteristic of early Renaissance work in
Spain

AMERICAN
ERA

Reconsideration and correlation of the space

needed in living areas broke down traditional
room divisions. The new interior, with its
invitation to movement, both actual and implied,
was in harmony with the times.
Changes of colour, texture, and materials
consequently became the chief resources of
decorative design, taking the place of ornament.

The demands of space made it necessary to keep

movable pieces of furniture to a minimum and
encouraged the use of built-in units. An earlier
overemphasis on straight lines and angles was
countered by greater use of curved and molded forms in
furniture design. As the average house became smaller
and more efficient in its use of enclosed space and as
the desire for outdoor living grew, there was a tendency
to replace at least one of the enclosing walls of both
livingroom and bedroom with glass.

The style that emerged from the Bauhaus, called

the International Style, was felt by many to be
lacking in human warmth. Its boxlike forms, its
hard and glassy surfaces, its use of metal tubing
and plywood, and its lack of colour and of
ornament.

1950s
transition from the two storey residential houses of the
American Period to three distinct types of building

Bungalow
a low one storey house made of light wood sometimes with
little stone and cement, with low ceilings, smaller windows
covered with wooden jalousies, granolithic flooring on the
living dining areas and T&G for the bedrooms, a small
kitchen off the dining room with the side door leading to a
garage. The colors of the interiors were limited to
varnishing if there was wood, and pastel colors for the
bedrooms

Split Level
One enters the house to find a living dining area; the floor
splits four steps or more up to the bedroom area, and down
to a rumpus or den which could be opened to a backyard.
The split affords a higher ceiling for the social areas which
makes the houses a little more airy. Walls were either adobe
stone or stone cut panels, the floor also granolithics or
crazy-cut marble, and the ceiling of painted wood with
some false beams as accents.

Apartment Houses
row upon row to storey residences sharing common walls.
One enters to see a living area, cut in the center by stairs
leading to the second floor. At the rear is the kitchen and
dining room combination and single bathroom in the
apartment.

1960s
houses in the Philippines were almost all influenced by
contemporary design in the West. With the coming of
industrialization, many western architects and designers
modified handcrafted items that could be manufactured by
a machine, giving birth to modern pieces that had both
honesty of construction.

The interiors of homes in the early sixties were still simple,

with adobe or painted walls, granolithics or marble
flooring, tiles for bathrooms and kitchens, center ceiling
fixtures, jalousie windows with wrought iron grilles,
panelled doors. One could just buy a set of furniture which
was either made of wood and sometimes with glass and
metal combination and place them right smack into a
living and dining room. The windows were covered either
with local Thai silk or glass curtains which were purchased
in Divisoria, from Larry's or Africa, Roma's or House of
Decor. Lights were purchased in Divisoria, from Moremci's,
Key-stone or Palayan Lamps. If one needed carpeting,
there was the House of rugs, or Lepanto Crafts, and later on
Tai Ping.

Barcelona chair, Eero Saarinen's monoleg,

Marcel Breuer's tubular steel pieces,
Bertoia's wire cafeteria chairs.
Thonet's bentwood pieces

These was later maximized with other developments inspired by

the changes in the other areas such as the music of the Beatles
and the miniskirt, a time of upheaval that ushered in a new
generation of the young and the upbeat. Soon enough it gave
way to the flower generation and the drug culture, and the
student activism that become rampant throughout the world.
Pop culture, glorifying everyday items such as Coca-Cola. the
hamburger, the local gas station and Marilyn Monroe founds its
way in art, in fashion and a new life style that depends on no
rules. Thus it was okay to mix a Barcelona chair with with
modern art and Philippines antiques, with a background of
adobe, wood panelling, and glass.

1970s
on our way towards the glass and steel age and the
International Style of the twentieth century characterized
by modern skyscrapers, cantilevered building methods,
glass walls, centralized aircondition, specialized lighting,
heat and noise control, music and sound systems and a
myriad other items that spelled out progress.

What resulted was a very sleek, hard-edged interior that

used all the modern furniture coming out of the west
blended with synthetics such as rubber foam, uretex and
urethane, naugahyde upholstery, metalic wallpaper, wall to
wall carpetin, built-in-furniture, black mirrors and pin
lighting on background of paneling laid horizontally, or on
synthetic adobe, with ceilings that floated with no cornices
and no baseboards. These were accessorized with plastics
or acrylic lamps in modern designs and art either abstract,
pop, or junk, supergraphics on the walls.

This was a period of the drug culture too, emanating a high from
self-induced medication, creating images of bright and exciting
colors, abstract shapes, unorganized forms and mind blowing
pictures, recorded in print such as the posters of Peter Max. This
in turn exploded to supergraphics, a put down of pompousness
of commercial architecture which has made man so tiny, so futile
in his environment, and so to assert his superiority, he plastered
his wall with numbers, spirals and murals, colors and whatever
else his boundless imagination could dream up to express his
frustration and mischief. It was used to add character to houses
which at this time became just a series of boxes, one after
another.

1980s
This was an altogether different picture. People grew tired of too much
adobe and dark panelling on the walls and the aluminum sliding doors
which opened to the lanai. So the windows and the door were changed
into French doors with the use of wood frames that were either
lacquered or painted white. Ceiling were treated with cornices, and
mouldings. Vertical panellings with mouldings and wainscoating came
back to walls. Floors were covered with marble insets of various colors
or to wood planks and special parquet. Chandeliers and wall sconces
came back into fashion, as with silk, embroidery and classical prints.
There was the introduction of the bay window, glass etchings for
dividers and of course the brass bed. White, beige or gray were the
predominant colors, peach, mint green, blue gray, lavender, old rose,
celadon, which went well for either bleached or duco painted cabinets
and furniture. The exterior of the house was also painted in light colors
with a growing interest in the use of Mactan stone.