In Britain we seem to find it acceptable that those in poverty should live and work in poor surroundings; we expect an impoverished environment, and the attitude seems to be “what does it matter anyway?
And yet our physical environment in part forms who we are, and certainly helps set our expectations. The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer describes this as the Relevance of the Beautiful.
I had the pleasure of meeting Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, yesterday at the opening of one of our buildings, the new Cambridge Advice Hub. The Hub, created from an old industrial building, houses the Cambridge Citizens Advice Bureau, with office accommodation for other third sector organisations, and bookable training rooms. In his speech to open the new building Mervyn King praised the CAB for its crucial role in providing advice for everyone, and the building for the quality of the 
environment it creates – and specifically that it challenged the assumption that buildings of this sort would necessarily be down at heel.
[Photo: Cambridge Evening News]