Nipa hut

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nipa hut is considered as the national house of the Philippines. It is, as the name implies, a hut, raised a few feet above the ground and constructed out of bamboo tied together, with a thatched roof using dried grass.

Nipa huts were once the original houses of the Philippines before the Spanish arrived and is still used as a domicile today, especially in rural areas. Different architectural designs are present among the different ethno-linguistic groups in the country, although all of them conform to being stilt houses, similar to those found in neighboring countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia.

An advantage of this sort of architecture is that it provides basic shelter from the most available and inexpensive of materials, and works well as protection against the average wind or rainfall, aside from providing good ventilation. However, the downside to these houses is that they are not stable enough to withstand the gale-force winds during the typhoons that ravage the country every year.

These huts are iconic symbols of what a house is in the country, the countryside, and as a part of the most recognized symbol of the concept of bayanihan. The usage of the nipa hut as a device to refer to bayanihan stems from the fact that moving the hut on two large poles requires a lot of people, includung the neighbors, thus demonstrating the spirit of bayanihan.