By coincidence I lived for a couple of years in a small flat in Matti Välikangas' Olympic Village in Helsinki (1939–40) to which Hildi Hawkins referred in Insight: ‘Home, sweet home’ (arq 7/1, pp 94–96). I too reflected my time in such environments onto my home here: the hyper-efficient planning, daylighting, wet-floor bathrooms, double-rebated doors with lift-off hinges etc. Along with a quality that I also sense in some design of the same period here; seemingly quite ordinary buildings imbued with the hopes of an embryonic welfare state and the care of the architects and builders who built them.