The Complex

        Every year, me and my siblings would accompany my mom to the annual Children's Christmas Party held inside the Department of Finance building. But for this year, the party was to be held, inside the ECDP building within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex, for the DOF building is undergoing renovation after a massive airconditioning breakdown took place earlier this year, forcing the DOF to move its offices to the nearby ECDP complex.

    Fortunately, I get to see the wonderful exteriors of the complex itself. It's BSP's exterior which fascinates me more than its rather blant and unsafe looking interiors of its buildings. The exterior found within BSP is creatively planned and landscaped in good taste. There's pretty much a lot of greenery found inside the complex which, added to that the wide space provided by the wide distance of the buildings between each other inside, gives people a sense of ease and sanctity with matching wind effect.

       A little piece of history I found unearthed is the ruins of what was remained of an old colonial fort called Fort Abad. Little do I know about this piece of old structure but other than the similar colonial arhcitecture it shares with the well-known Fort Santiago, it somehow gave Manilenyos an idea of what Manila was back then, as the whole stretch of Roxas Boulevard used to be one stretch of a beach extending all the way to Pasay and Cavite.
 
           The buildings are well designed on the outside, very reminiscent of the Marcos-era architecture propagated by Former First Lady Imelda Marcos. One design that caught my fancy was the almost shoe-box like layout of each of the buildings, similar to the design followed by SM North EDSA and SM Megamall. The DOF building and one of the BSP complex building are connected via a bridge which also serves as a facade for people preferring to walk outside of the buildings.

    Also an ergonomic plus are the availabiltiy of facilities/walkways for the physically-disabled like those who ride on wheelchairs.

     But that leads me to the worst part about the complex, its interiors. The ECDP building is probably the best case to highlight a design gone wrong. If it looks good on the outside, it's not much of an eyesore (because unlike the DFA Building, it has a lot of green space), the inside is.

1. It smells like someone from 30 years ago smoked like crazy just before airconditioning units became the ideal alternative for electric fans.

2. The already-dim lighst are in dire need to repairs

3. Ventilation is rather mediocre or just below it.

4. The elevators looks like one of those deadly quadrelateral  killing machines seen on the movie "Hyper Cube" for it looks, feels, and functions in a very unsafe way.

5. The corridors/hallways is a blah. If you were able to watch old 1980's movies starring Dawn Zulueta and Sharon Cuneta where they were working in as office girls, you may have ntoice that their working area is made out of wood. It's the same here, except that the wooden walls are in dire need of varnishing to make them at least look shiny.

6. There are few offices inside the ECDP building's 8th floor that looks so decent, but looking at my mom's temporary office (Fiscal Policy and Planning Office) there, it kind resembles my mom's previous office way before she moved to her proper office found at the more-tolerable DOF building. The only redeeming factors would be the sleek looking Fuji PC's and the cool-looking office tables.

7. Don't even start me up on the bathrooms, the male restroom is poorly maintained, smelly and lacks basic restroom necessities like soaps and tissue-filled containers. The sinks are supposed to be used for washing hands not washing dishes for crying out loud! And one of the sink doesn't work because the leftovers brought by the washed dishes had all bt cloged it up.

8. Back to the hallways, the dim lighting and the wooden walls remind me of a psycho-horror thriller where the victim is being chased  by a killer while running on an endless hallway with nowhere to go.

Unfortunately, I didn't brought my camera with me that time but I do have pics of the exterior from last Friday. Enjoy!^


Coming up next: The Rolling of the Chairs