評論
打印
But that's getting harder to do, because cities are becoming smooth.
但這樣的機會已經越來越少了，因為城市正在變得光滑。
New downtowns sprout towers that are almost always made of concrete and steel and covered in glass.
高塔在市中心拔地而起，但卻幾乎全是有著被玻璃覆蓋表面的鋼筋混凝土。
You can look at skylines all over the world -- Houston, Guangzhou, Frankfurt
看看世界各地的城市天際線吧--休斯頓，廣州，法蘭克福，
and you see the same army of high-gloss robots marching over the horizon.
你會看見那些一模一樣的高拋光機器人大軍正在水平面上前行。
Now, just think of everything we lose when architects stop using the full range of available materials.
現在，讓我們想想當建筑師們不再使用那么多可用的材料時，我們將失去的一切。
When we reject granite and limestone and sandstone and wood and copper and terra-cotta and brick and wattle and plaster,
當我們拋棄了花崗巖、石灰巖、砂巖、木材、銅片、陶瓦、磚、籬枝或是石膏，
we simplify architecture and we impoverish cities.
我們簡化了這些建筑，我們拋光了整個城市。
It's as if you reduced all of the world's cuisines down to airline food.
這就好比把世界各地的美食簡化成飛機餐。
Chicken or pasta? But worse still,
雞肉和通心粉二選一？但是更槽糕的是，
assemblies of glass towers like this one in Moscow suggest a disdain for the civic and communal aspects of urban living. Right?
那些像是在莫斯科的這種玻璃高樓的組合，其實暗含著一種對于城市社會生活的歧視。對吧？
Buildings like these are intended to enrich their owners and tenants,
像這樣的建筑都成為了招攬開發商或是入駐公司的手段，
but not necessarily the lives of the rest of us, those of us who navigate the spaces between the buildings.
而它們對于每天穿行其中的我們來說卻沒有太多存在的意義。
And we expect to do so for free.
而我們正在自覺接受這樣免費的存在。
Shiny towers are an invasive species and they are choking our cities and killing off public space.
亮晶晶的高塔是一種入侵物種，而它們的存在窒息了我們的城市，也碾壓了我們的公共空間。
We tend to think of a facade as being like makeup,
我們趨向于把建筑的外表當作被粉飾的門面，
a decorative layer applied at the end to a building that's effectively complete.
最后附上的裝飾層，會讓建筑看起來很完整。
But just because a facade is superficial doesn't mean it's not also deep.
但是一個輕薄的外表并不意味著建筑本身沒有深度。
