47 Berkeley Square London

I was passing by this building located at 47, Berkeley Square in Mayfair, it is one of the most prestigious locations in London and perhaps one of the most expensive square meters on the planet.
‘The house was built in 1750 and overhauled in 1891 by architectures George and Peto in an early Italian renaissance style’. Despite its rich history and glamour, the building has today a much more modest and tired look (Historic England, 2016).
The front door appears to be broken and its walls have not been painted for a long time; when walkers pass the building one might even question whether the building was abandoned or simply empty due to the lack of interested buyers.
However, the main reason for this building being the target of this article is, because it is the head office of Bank J. Safra Sarasin today, owned by Joseph Safra (J. Safra Sarasin, 2016), whose wealth is estimated at US$17 billion (Forbes, 2016).
I see this building as a metaphor of the current financial system. The image displayed to pedestrians passing by is, a poor looking building which most probably would never attract anyone’s attention. When the building itself could worth as much as £35 million; a sum amount of money which would take around 2,233 years for a minimum waged citizen to save without having to pay any other expenses whatsoever (Gov.uk, 2016).
Inequality is arguably not an issue, which at some extent I must agree, however, how much inequality can we allow into our society without letting it collapse or provoke more violence? Being born in Brazil I have witnessed such issue during my childhood and learnt to wrongly accept it, however, current figures are reaching levels of despair and cases such as 47 Berkeley Square is, unfortunately becoming more frequent.