Philippine Spanish Interior Design

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 Luna’s “Tampuhan”

The interior of Bahay na Bato

•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

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.   

CuartosRooms 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 (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).

The Caida or Antesala

•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 Mayor

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 neo-Classical 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.  

•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.

Comedor

•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.

Cocina

Baño

The bathroom contains two sizes of bañeras (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.  

AzoteaActivities 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

AMERICANERA

•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.

1950’s

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.

1960’s

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.

1970’s

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.

1980’s

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.