Modern house design in the Philippines: clean lines that suit the heat and the rain

A modern house is one built with simple shapes and little decoration: flat or plain roofs, straight lines, large windows, open rooms that run into each other, and materials left to show what they are. The look came from Europe and North America in the last century. It works in the Philippines, but only once it is adjusted for a climate that is hot all year and very wet for half of it.

What makes a house modern

• Simple forms. Boxes and plain planes, with no columns, cornices or ornament added for show.
• Open plans. Living, dining and kitchen in one space, so the house feels larger than its floor area.
• Large openings. Wide windows and sliding doors that join the rooms to the garden or the lanai.
• Honest materials. Concrete, steel, glass, timber and stone, finished plainly.
• Few, deliberate details. The quality is in the proportions and how things meet, so those are drawn carefully.

Contemporary design is the word often used for what is current now. In practice, people searching for either usually mean the same clean-lined house.

The roof is where modern meets the tropics

The flat roof and thin edge that define many modern houses abroad are the parts that suit the Philippines least.

• Flat concrete roofs collect the heat of the day and hand it to the rooms below at night, and they leak once the waterproofing ages unless they are laid to fall and kept up. Where a roof deck is wanted, it needs insulation, a proper fall to its drains and a waterproofing system chosen for full sun.
• A low-pitched roof hidden behind a parapet keeps the clean box look from the street while shedding rain the way a pitched roof does. The parapet gutter is the weak point, so it needs room and a clear outlet.
• A simple pitched or shed roof with deep eaves is the most practical modern roof here. A single slope, a skillion, reads as modern and keeps the sun and rain off the walls.

The house roof design guide compares roof shapes and how steep each needs to be.

Big windows without the heat

Large glass is what makes a modern house feel open, and in the tropics it is also how a house overheats.

• Shade the glass from outside. Eaves, canopies, fins or a screen of slats in front of the window stop the sun before it reaches the glass, which curtains inside cannot.
• Put the biggest openings to the north and south, where eaves can shade them, and keep west walls more closed against the afternoon sun.
• Make the big windows open. A sliding wall of glass that cannot be opened is a heat trap. Openings on opposite sides of a room let the breeze cross it.

The sustainable design guide covers orientation and cross-ventilation in more depth.

Materials for the climate

• Concrete and masonry take typhoons and termites well and give the plain surfaces modern design likes. Painted in a pale colour, the walls absorb less heat.
• Timber and bamboo soften the look and are traditional here, used where the rain and the sun do not reach them, or treated for it.
• Exposed steel rusts in humid and salty air unless it is protected and maintained.
• White walls stain under drips and mould, so eaves and drip edges over windows protect the look as much as the wall.

Modern and Filipino together

The best modern houses in the Philippines borrow from the older houses here: a raised floor, wide eaves, walls that breathe, and a lanai as the main living space. The modern bahay kubo guide shows how those ideas sit inside a modern design, and the types of houses guide sets the modern house beside the traditional forms.

Modern on a small lot

Simple shapes suit small lots, because a plain box wastes less floor and builds more easily than a complicated plan. A two-storey modern house on a subdivision lot is common: the two-storey house guide covers the stair and the structure, and the small house design guide covers what fits.

Where this practice fits

We design modern houses for Philippine lots and weather across Central Luzon. For more ideas, see the house design ideas guide, and for the outer skin, the cladding house design guide. Our custom house design service starts from your lot and your family, and our 3D rendering and walkthrough service lets you see the house before it is built.