Palauan Bai

The bai is the traditional men's meeting house of Palau. Larger and grander than ordinary houses, it served community functions as the civic and spiritual centre of a village. Its steep roof and tall front gable, painted with scenes from Palauan legends, make it one of the most distinctive roof forms in Micronesia.

Form and materials

Palauan houses were elongated A-frame structures, and bai followed a similar shape at a larger scale. Oral history collected by the Pacific Worlds project records that bai were built without nails, tied together with rope made from coconut husk fibre. The traditional thatch was pandanus (búuk); thatch of nipa palm (tóechel) came into use later, and palm fronds (melóuch) changed roofing again. Bai stand on raised stone platforms, often at the meeting point of stone pathways.

Airai Bai

The Airai Bai (Bai ra Irrai) on Babeldaob is the best-known surviving example and has been described as the last traditional building of its kind in Palau. Built around 1890 on a platform that had carried earlier bai, it measures 20.7 by 6.1 m (68 by 20 ft) and reaches a peak height of about 12 m (40 ft). Its facade and interior beams are decorated with depictions of Palauan legends. It underwent a major restoration in the 1970s and was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places on 20 September 1976, when Palau was part of the US-administered Trust Territory.

The Berlin bai

In 1907 a bai was built for the Ethnological Museum in Berlin under the direction of doctor and ethnologist Augustin Krämer, and it was first shown to the public in 1908. Although built at reduced scale, it resembles other Palauan meeting houses. About sixty years later a floor and roof truss were added. The building is now displayed at the Humboldt Forum, and in summer 2022 a team from Palau led by Patrick Tellei gave it a new roof, an example of source communities maintaining traditional roofing skills on objects held abroad.

Today

Most Palauan homes now have metal or concrete roofs: in the 2012 mini-census, 16.6% of housing units had concrete roofs and the rest metal, wood or other materials. Bai remain important symbols of Palauan identity and are maintained or rebuilt with community labour.

Related forms

Comparable Pacific meeting houses include the Yapese faluw, the Kiribati maneaba, the Sepik haus tambaran and the Māori wharenui.