BIR Office Headquarters
Client: Bureau of Internal Revenue
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
Date: January 2021
A proposed government tax office design for the new normal.
Exterior Perspective Idea 1: The front facade is an increasing bar chart.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue is a government agency under Department of Finance that handles the assessment and collection of all national internal revenue taxes, fees, and charges, and the enforcement of all forfeitures, penalties, and fines connected therewith.
DESIGN OBJECTIVE
Once the floor plans were finalized, I was tasked to come up with several schemes for the building's facade that would conveying the essence of BIR.
Scheme 1: Grey and black are main colors, the facade itself is kept pretty simple, with a few louvers and two slanted walls providing accents.
Starting with a base color palette of grey and black to convey, neutrality, wisdom, intelligence, dignity and stability. The following designs are more postmodern and playful, utilizing a more overt symbolism.
Scheme 2: JUSTICE - Two half-sphere balconies with pocket gardens and grooves on a solid wall create an image of a weighing scale when viewed from certain angles. However, this might be more appropriate for courts of justice.
Scheme 3: MONEY - Inspired by the Philippine banknote. The pairs of congruent horizontal line cutouts on the side mimic the tactile marks found on bills (to help the visually impaired to identify money). Colored rectangles on the opposite side resemble the various watermarks and other design features on the paper bill, with the baybayin for BIR spelled out serving as the "label" of the money's amount.
FINAL SCHEME: The chosen design features vertical solid walls of varying heights that mimic a bar chart with a positive trend - symbolizing data, finance, growth and progress.
INTERIOR OFFICE DESIGN FOR THE NEW NORMAL
The biggest concern in the design of public spaces, and especially transactional spaces such as banks or offices, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was how to control the spread of the virus in crowded settings. Social distancing was one strategy employed to minimize direct person to person contact, however this is challenging for spaces like these where hundreds of people move in and out, exchange items, interact and go about their business.
Interior Walkthrough of the lobby and 4th floor cash office
In the early days of the outbreak, hasty solutions were made to enforce social distancing - stickers became popular ways to reminded people to sit one seat apart and maintain their distance in queues. However such stickers are unsightly and are easily worn down when placed on the floor; so instead contrasting colored tile patterns are used here in the elevator lobby to remind people how far apart they should stand, while still being aesthetically pleasing harmonizing with the rest of the interior design.
The ideal pandemic office would have workers in their own separate work rooms while coordinating digitally - occasionally meeting up in the conference rooms to collaborate. However this impractical for many due to budget and space concerns, so the open plan remains, with only cubicles to provide a modicum of protection and privacy.
Acrylic barriers were popular measures to literally shield oneself from air-borne droplets (though studies on a room's air flow question their effectiveness). For this open plan office, more permanent glass partitions were used instead on office workstations for employees' peace of mind, with the added bonus of increased noise privacy and a neat place to write notes using whiteboard marker.
The HVAC system is equipped with HEPA filters and a fresh air supply to mitigate the risk of indoor transmission.
Given the uncertainty of the pandemic's future, it is vital that these design decisions still be sensible and worthwhile once the need for such extreme control measures have subsided.
