By Marilou Guieb / Correspondent
BAGUIO City has always been known to be the escape from the oppressive heat and chaos of modern cities.
But no longer, as visitors and residents alike are feeling the big shift from the chilly air to concrete island heat, pine-clad open spaces to traffic snarls, and the noise of a city that has gone awry in the mad scramble to be a competitive commercial district.
A few pockets of green and spiritual spaces remain the saving grace.
One is the quiet Cosmic Journey designed by the Maryknoll nuns in their Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary (MES), which feels like a waiting oasis of calm, a quick short turn from the Marcos Highway, one of the most stressful spots of traffic in the city.
The sanctuary stroll goes through the stone walkways on a spiraling slope, like the journey from earth to ethereal places, exploring the wonder of creation through 14 stations. The tour asks that you depart from the confusion of day-to-day chaos and be awed by the miracle of evolution.
The Cosmic Gate leads to pathways strewn with flowers and ferns and shaded by towering pine trees, bringing one to stations that go back in time. It tells the story when caves were sanctuaries, till the time when religion and cultures were shaped.
The trail ends in a delightful and rather curious shelter, a fusion of old architectural wisdom and modern construction.
A hybrid to blend the past with the present, said its builder, Emma Villanueva. It is called the Earth House.
During the launch of the structure, Villanueva started the story of how she built it with humor.
People have asked her, “Are you an architect?” To which she answered “No” with a laugh. Are you a contractor? An engineer? Are you a nun? All of these amused her. For, in fact, she had no notion at all of the principles of construction when the project was handed to her.
So she took to experimentation and a lot of common sense.
Yet, the Earth House, for its integrity and aesthetics, was one praised by architects and engineers, who now and then come to check out the progress of her work and asked her for building tips.
The Earth House and how it began
THE Maryknoll nuns renovated a building and ended up with construction debris that were still of use and dumped them on an empty space that has now become the end of the Cosmic Journey.
The Maryknoll directress then, Sis. Catherine Encarnacion—Sister Cathy as she is called—thought it would be a perfect spot to complete the journey, a statement that one has reached the present while serving as a restful viewing experience.
Villanueva lived a stone’s throw away from the Maryknoll compound. Maryknoll then had a lot of artistic activities going on and the energy beckoned to her curious nature, for one can say she was a lady always in quest for enrichment of mind.
She and Sister Cathy soon became fast friends, and soon she found herself engrossed in refurbishing an old bodega space into a café kitchen.
She opened up some walls for the light to come in, put some antique doors and posts, set up hand- hewn hardwood counters and brightened up some spots with colorful weaves and put some accent baskets, turning the dark interior into an inviting nook.
Sister Virginia, MES directress, in charge of the renovation, was pleased and impressed and when the idea of a new shelter at the Cosmic Trail came up, she looked at Villanueva and said, “You are the right person for this.”
Before coming home to the Philippines, Sister Cathy had served in missions in Latin America and seen cobhouses (earthern houses), commonly also seen in Africa and Europe, and had a long fascination for these structures because they were made from available resources and community spirit.
Right away then, the concept of a hybrid house, recycling the material set aside from the earlier renovation blended into a cobhouse project, came to mind.
Villanueva at first was intimidated with the idea, never ever having been into any construction activity in her life. But her enthusiasm for new things and the persuasion of Sister Cathy prevailed. It was going to be a labor of love, and Villanueva told herself, “Learn from it.” That was going to be reward enough.
But funds were needed, and the indomitable Sister Cathy organized a “lunch for a cause” on her birthday, and raisedthe funds as gifts from heirs of Juan and Damiana Fabella. A family member and artist, Ara-Santos-Halili, drew the designs that became the seeds of the final work.
There was no turning back. Villanueva stood on the spot and studied the sun. It was strongest on the south so there the sun must come in, and the north to be protected.
She then tapped the expertise of Zelimir Stuggart, who built a cobhouse. Stuggart, would say that houses in Baguio where it is always cold and rainy must be of natural material where walls can breathe. Otherwise, mildew will form and make the settlers sick. His own house had withstood the storms of more than a decade, built by artist friends.
Stuggart started the earth house, building a stone foundation high enough to protect the mudwalls from touching the ground.
Then it was time for her to be on her own.
She browsed the Internet and instruction materials. Working from scratch, she experimented with the clay soil right where she was building, trying different mixtures of clay, sand and straw, drying them in brick sizes then dropping each until she got just the right formula where the clay bricks didn’t break when dropped to the ground. Handful by handful, they cobbed the mud into the bamboo slats put on walls, shaping the mud around window and door frames. The wall went around like a mandala, optimizing the feature of the clay that can be sculpted and shape houses in graceful curves.
Weekends became fun workshops as groups wanting to learn came to knead clay with their feet, which incidentally is like a good foot spa.
Villanueva acquired new skills as she went on. One was cutting wine bottles and jars, a lot of colored ones, which were inserted into the bamboo weaves and became part of the wall. A wall with colored glass is beautiful, but aside from its aesthetics, it lets natural light to come in.
Cutting glass using the principle of heat then dipped in cold water also became occasional workshops for the curious.
Villanueva worked with the makers of the Pitak project, Cye Reyes and Carol Galvez, who down in La Union had also experimented with a shed made of cobbing material. They also facilitated the workshops.
The Earth House progressed organically, the sun, the landscape, available material and the creative whims of Villanueva dictating the design.
It helped that Villanueva was from a family of furniture makers and antique enthusiasts in Vigan. From their stock of old wood and darkened antique pieces, Villanueva put accents in the interior, giving a touch of warmth and coziness to the open space.
After more than half of her construction was done, Villanueva was completely enamored with the idea of sustainable construction and traveled to Thailand to take up a hands-on course on natural building and cobhouses at the Pun Pun Center.
“From that Thailand experience, I learned that you can make earthen houses really beautiful,” Villanueva said, as she showed some pictures of cobhouses she had visited there.
She also mastered the technique in making adobe bricks—cobwork sometimes referred to as adobe.
“Some of the oldest houses in Vigan were really of these adobe bricks, but dry-fired or baked,” she said, adding that so were old clay ovens, which she intends to build for baking bread and pizza in her Maryknoll eatery.
Villanueva asserts that even as natural building and mudhouses excite her, she is not a purist and has, in fact, read on conventional building, utilizing the principles in her construction. Interior dividers are of Styrofoam fitted into steel mattings then covered with cement, recycled from the renovation debris.
A fireplace sculpted to an interesting funnel shape is a living-room accent.
Her kitchen-sink area is done in Italian tiles, expensive if not for the fact that she got a box of broken tiles that hardware stores sell for P40 a box and cut them to fit.
What is so striking in the Earth House are how the colored light filter bottles reflect so starkly beautiful against the white walls.
“We used lime coating, which is white. Lime is still a natural mineral that allows the walls to breathe,” she said. She had samples of natural dyes—indigo, red, orange—that she sourced from village women who still knew the plants that gave the beautiful hues of dyes.
Her walk-in toilet bathroom is paved with Pasuquin stones from Ilocos Norte. Indeed, the story of creating the Earth House takes you to her road adventures, as she often jumps behind the wheel and drives off where she finds treasures to add to the Earth House.
The roofing is of cogon grass installed with sprinklers in case it catches fire. Because her project attracted so many alternative builders, the Halili family, distributor of Sunpower solar panels, offered four panels, each with a 100-watt capacity.
Villanueva again hurdled the difficulty of installing them, clasping them with angle bars to the bamboo rafters.
“My mantra is everything has a solution,” she said.
To keep water away from the house, she also dug a French drain with a perforated pipe under and covered with pebbles, the gutter gushing water exactly where it is. A spacious loft is an added sleeping area.
When it was all done, Villanueva sat inside to reflect on its weak spots.
The site surrounded by tall pine trees is dark. Next time I should think about daylight roofing or tempered glass, she said, to maximize passive lighting.
The Earth House comes with a message. Villanueva, totally naïve about construction, emerged a certified hybrid builder. And if she can do it with just mud, sand and water, so can communities, and governments—and no one needs to be ever homeless.
Image credits: Mau Victa