The building consists of three buildings connected together: a “front” building facing the Zemlyanoy Val line, and two volumes in the courtyard - one with a square courtyard well intended for offices, the second, higher and slightly more compact, which will house the tax office itself.
Its basis is rectangular blocks of buildings, all facades of which are lined with black-and-white stripes of "ribbon" windows. The striping is complemented by a thin horizontal dotted line of small windows, a large line "stitching" between white and black horizontals, removing the sharpness of the color contrast and once again emphasizing the horizontal lines.
On top of the striped base, large rectangles are superimposed asymmetrically in different places: glass, white, flat, protruding or, conversely, strongly deepened. There is a feeling of mutual penetration of two structures - one very strict - relatively speaking, the basis, and the other, more dynamic, enriching and complicating the original geometry.
This combination is the basis of many works by Vladimir Plotkin. But in this case, it seems, in addition to the author's own artistic instinct, various objective circumstances decided to take the side of the dynamic component. The asymmetry is enhanced by the fact that the main river of the Nemetskaya Sloboda Chernogryazka, which is taken into the pipe, flows underground along the site. The street facade, located between the 4-storey “former profitable” building of the 19th century and two imposing “Stalinist” ones, corresponds to their structure and proportions. The neighboring Stalinist building determines the height, provokes the appearance of a glass attic, which, in Plotkin's work, turns out to be higher by as much as three floors, but being slightly moved away from the plane of the facade, due to the perspective reduction, it falls into the same rhythm and scale. Two glazed ledges reflect the deep loggias on the Stalinist house. On the other hand, the facade is "tied" to the height of the four-storey building with the help of a white rectangle that cuts off a small part of the ribbon windows. According to the architect, there are even “too many bows in different directions” here.
However, the “bows” inevitable in the city center do not spoil the building at all - on the contrary, when they invade, they seem to cause some plastic indignation, which, in the absence of “circumstances”, most likely should have been invented anyway. The invasion does not change the overall style - crystal clear, permeated with white-glass lightness, redeeming large sizes. It's just that inside a self-confident, polished and completely complete artistic system, either a kind of "circles in the water" or a natural reaction to stimuli, like a pearl shell, into which sand has fallen, appears.
