BANAUE, Ifugao—It was mid-morning and the gentle breeze of May blowing in the village of Hiwang here completes the picture-perfect image of a thriving community amid the Ifugao rice terraces.

Florencio Humiwat, a 57-year-old farmer-carpenter living in the village, marvels at his surroundings while sipping native brewed coffee under a hut, which his calloused hands helped build 20 years ago.

His 10-by-16-meter hut, a piece of authentic Ifugao architecture, now commands a high price among artifact traders and, in the future, could be the object of one who might venture in his village.

But for now, Humiwat does not want to part with this house and is bent on ensuring that this remains with the family, as an inheritance to his seven children. He does not want to return to that moment of desperation in 1984 when he was forced to sell his family’s hut for P46,000 so he could buy palay seedlings for his farm.

Humiwat, if he’s not farming, uses his skills to recreate the huts of his ancestors through contracts offered by people who have money to spare. By his reckoning, he had built at least seven huts for a local antique collector, for Sen. Edgardo Angara in Aurora and for his neighbors.

“These houses reflect our heritage. They are among our remaining heirlooms,” Humiwat says.

But a quick tour of the town center of Banaue, Ifugao’s most popular tourist town, may frustrate a first-time visitor who would be welcomed by concrete structures not unlike those seen in lowland areas. Only a few traditional Ifugao huts remain around Banaue’s commercial district, some of them standing desolately and abandoned amid the verdant rice terraces.

Evolving structures

Products of indigenous architecture, such as the Ifugao houses in upland communities, are living examples of structures that use sustainable, green construction methods, says engineer Roy Anthony Luna, director of the AMH Philippines Inc.-Engineers & Consultants.

“Green construction,” says Luna, features the use of eco-friendly materials and focuses on functionality and practicability.

“Sustainable construction is associated with innovations…and involves the use of energy-efficient and low-impact materials that can withstand natural calamities such as flooding and earthquakes,” he says. “The past generation had a concept of building sustainable structures, that is why most of these still exist today.”

In mountain communities, such as in the Cordillera, indigenous peoples have mastered sustainable construction by considering the availability and affordability of materials, safety and strength of the structures, and how these would blend and adapt with the environment, says Luna, also a senior lecturer of geotechnical engineering at the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Civil Engineering.

“Indigenous peoples in upland communities have acquired a thorough familiarity with drainage systems, the use of simple hand tools, concept of hydraulic technology, and adaptation and mitigation of structures in their unstable and harsh environment. Small but well-constructed, their houses can withstand harsh weather,” he says.

Luna cites smart designs found in houses in rural communities around the Philippines, such as houses on stilts and structures made from the all-weather bamboo and coconut timber.

He says engineers and architects are inspired to see a mixture of using indigenous materials and modern technology in building huge structures, both in rural and urban areas.

Mixing traditional, modern designs

While the number of native huts that are being used and built in Ifugao is dwindling, Mariano Balekdang, a seasonal carpenter, believes that the values and culture of the Ifugao people that come with the building of these structures and communities would remain.

The 67-year-old Balekdang, who has built traditional huts around his native Banaue, says he is hopeful that the Ifugao hut—or its basic features—would remain even in modern times because construction experts have seen how the structure had stood time.

Balekdang’s optimism springs from seeing communities that are building houses and other structures with a mixture of traditional and modern designs and materials.

Balekdang, also a resort guide at the Banaue Ethnic Village, says while house owners stick to the design of the Ifugao house, they now prefer using concrete instead of wood for posts and floors, and galvanized iron sheets instead of thatched cogon for roofing material. Many use nails to keep the beams and panels intact. Newer huts are larger to accommodate more family members, he adds.

“The lack of sturdy wood, growing families and modernization are some factors why you see modern houses and buildings in Ifugao. But you will notice that the way these were constructed, their designs were copied from our traditional houses,” he says.

Balekdang says an authentic Ifugao hut has four solid vertical posts, with hardwood horizontal beams and a thatched roof hanging from the center post. Ifugao houses, he says, do not use a single nail or metal to fasten its parts. Its cogon roofs could be easily dismantled and reassembled.

Narra and molave, he says, are the preferred materials because lumber from these indigenous tree species could last for generations.

In Balekdang’s outdoor “office” at the Banaue Ethnic Village Resort, some 6 kilometers from the town proper, visitors are treated to a crash course on the evolution of Ifugao houses.

As one who has built and lived in these structures and who has embraced the rich culture of his forefathers, Balekdang is among the local experts who could explain the value of this indigenous dwelling place to the Ifugao people.

The resort features four types of Ifugao huts. Balekdang says the abong, which is built on the ground, and inappal, which is slightly elevated, serve as temporary shelters for farmers when working in the rice terraces. Families live in the bale, which is elevated for about 10 feet. The alang (granary), he says, is where dried palay is stored and is guarded by a carved wooden image of the bul-ul or bulol (rice-granary guardian), another prized artifact.

One of the huts in the resort features a long wooden bench called hagabi. The hut’s exterior wooden panels featured skulls of carabaos and pigs, as well as farming tools. These features are symbols to distinguish the dwelling places of the kadangyan, or the wealthy families who could afford to host community feasts.

“I grew up living in a traditional hut. I have seen how my grandfather and my father construct this kind of hut which amazed me. It is not easy to build one. Whatever I learned from them, I also wanted to teach to the young generation,” Balekdang says.

Preserving heritage

The provincial government has no official inventory of the remaining “authentic” huts in Ifugao because these are considered private property, whose care and disposal lie on their owners. Ifugao huts are considered authentic if these have been used for at least three generations or about 50 years.

But efforts in preserving the Ifugao hut and other indigenous structures are not lacking. Government agencies and Ifugao communities have been devising ways to keep their heritage.

The Banaue Ethnic Village Resort, run by the Dunuan family, is an example of mixing business and culture preservation that, in the end, benefits both local families and tourists.

Cecille Gulliting-Kitong, project development officer of the Ifugao Cultural Heritage Office (ICHO), says most Ifugao huts within the rice terraces are being transformed by their owners as accommodations for tourists or used as storage areas.

“In order to sustain the structures, villagers are transforming the huts as tourist attractions or lodging areas for visitors so they can earn from it. Some use these huts as storage areas for their belongings,” Kitong says.

In Baguio City the Tam-awan Village has become a tourist magnet because it is marketed as a model Cordillera village that features native huts from Ifugao, Mountain Province and Kalinga. The village is a haven of local artists and is a popular venue for cultural performances.

Engineer Chit Asignacion, vice president of the Chanum Foundation that runs Tam-awan Village, says by recreating a Cordillera village through the reconstruction of several knocked-down and abandoned native huts, the foundation wants to promote and enhance the appreciation of indigenous structures, local culture and history.

Asignacion says Ifugao architecture reflects the traditional practices of the people, their heritage and traditional knowledge.

“We wanted people to get a glimpse of village life [in the Cordillera interior]. These Ifugao huts are deteriorating but the sophisticated art in it, the practicability and simplicity of the indigenous people, will always be represented in these huts,” he says.

Asignacion says modern structures such as the Baguio-Benguet Museum in Baguio City; the Philippine War Memorial Shrine in Kiangan, Ifugao; and many government offices in the Cordillera follow the structural design of the Ifugao hut.

“Ifugao traditional builders were not architects or engineers. They have no knowledge on building equipment and technologies but they were able to construct sturdy structures [that withstood earthquakes and other natural calamities]. For artists like us, they are inspiration in all art forms,” he says.

Antique collectors, Asignacion says, seek these authentic huts now considered as heirlooms.  An authentic Ifugao hut may cost P500,000, or more, he says.

Living art

Maria Lourdes Jacob, executive director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), says the Ifugao hut is one of the most admired indigenous architectural designs in the country.

Through the Schools of Living Traditions program under the NCCA, Jacob say transmission of indigenous skills and techniques in construction, such as building an Ifugao hut, is considered as “living arts and crafts that can be developed and enrich contemporary designs.”

“It is the symbol of fusion of old and modern practice in the purest form. You can see in the structure the modification of construction, the arts and the ingenuity of the past indigenous people,” Jacob says.

Kitong says part of the integration of culture subjects in the school curriculum in Ifugao is sustainable construction of native houses where students are taught the traditional arts and craft of their ancestors.

Restoring Ifugao’s traditional huts will not just help individual families but will boost the province’s bid to save the rice terraces, its most important heritage.

Kitong says the Ifugao rice terraces are in danger of being removed from the list of World Heritage Sites of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) but the building of huts within the terraces may yet save the relic.

ICHO documents show that a team of Unesco experts, in a visit last month, urged local officials to encourage communities to repair and preserve indigenous structures because it is a “way to keep and enhance the skills in building houses that is embedded in the people.”

Rio Dale Humiwat, Banaue tourism operations officer, says the Banaue government has been assisting homeowners in maintaining native houses because these are considered as the most valuable possessions of their people.

“There are some villages with native Ifugao houses that are intact. For some, in order to preserve it, they are changing some parts of the house with concrete posts, galvanized iron and plywood,” he says.

The Banaue government, he says, has started identifying and documenting native houses that need to be preserved or reconstructed.

Ifugao Rep. Teodoro Baguilat Jr., chairman of the committee on national cultural communities of the House of Representatives, says a government-led mapping of traditional houses in the province is the first important step in preserving and sustaining Ifugao communities.

“[Through mapping, we will] know which ones to preserve and which ones to reconstruct. But [that would] depend on what the owners wanted to do with their houses,” he says.

A study by Zenia Ananayo of the nonprofit group Nurturing Knowledge Experts describes the native Ifugao house as an expression of the Ifugao people’s “creativity, feelings, thought processes, values, experiences, fears and aspirations.”

“Preserving Ifugao heritage [through the] traditional huts is important.... Heritage is how one generation shapes, preserves and maintains the past, in the process of preparing and enhancing the present for future generations,” she says.

Baguilat, a former Ifugao governor and mayor of Kiangan town, says it is comforting to know that many families, like those in Hungduan and Banaue towns, still live in Ifugao huts that were built by their elders.

“The structure promotes local pride and great appreciation of cultural identity. But modernization is taking place now in most communities. As a result, you can see ‘modernized’ Ifugao houses in [these areas],” he says.

While tradition, or a part of it, inevitably gives way to modernization, Florencio Humiwat believes that the Ifugao heritage, as represented by his people’s traditional huts, would live on through the efforts of modern builders who recognize its importance in sustainable construction.

“We take pride in seeing the ingenuity and smart design used by our forefathers in modern-day structures. We put all our effort and soul in building these houses for our families and communities,” says Humiwat.