of the past were built for spiritual purposes. They rose next to Renaissance churches and from the tops of Gothic cathedrals calling with their bells the prayer hours. As minarets they served and still serve to remind Moslem worshippers of their well-timed duties. They were also built as symbols of civic pride on or next to city halls. If they could be used to warn of an approaching enemy or bring citizens to important gatherings, so much the better. And they were tall: 200, 300 feet and more, all of them of stone, masonry, or bricks.
如果我们不考虑撒拉逊人在地中海沿岸建造的防御塔，以及类似的意大利和法国中世纪城墙城镇的防御塔，过去几乎所有其他的高塔都是为了精神目的而建造的。他们站在文艺复兴时期的教堂旁边，站在哥特式教堂的顶部，用钟声呼唤着祈祷时间。作为宣礼塔，他们服务，并仍然服务于提醒穆斯林信徒他们的正当职责。它们也是市政厅或市政厅旁边的市民骄傲的象征。如果它们可以用来警告正在逼近的敌人，或者把市民带到重要的集会上，那就更好了。他们都很高:有200、300英尺甚至更高，都是用石头、砖石或砖块砌成的。
La Tour Eiffel acknowledges nothing so lofty or utilitarian. It was from the beginning a gigantic lark, an iron toy from which Parisians might admire their city, at the cost of one and one-half million 1889 dollars. And did it get hell from the defenders of the French tradition of beauty! Bonguereau, the academic painter; Garnier, the architect of the Opera; Dumas, Jr., the novelist; Gounod, the composer; Leconte de Lisle, the poet; Prudhomme, the essayist; Guy de Maupassant, the novelist, all signed a resounding letter of indignant protest to the Minister of Public Works in an attempt to stop “the horror”. Guy de Maupassant, never relenting, had lunch at the Tower as often as possible so as not to have to look at it. And he had a point, for the Tower so dominated Paris it could be seen from anywhere in the city, expect from inside one of its restaurants.
埃菲尔铁塔不承认任何如此崇高或功利的东西。从一开始，它就是一只巨大的百灵鸟，一个供巴黎人欣赏的铁玩具，耗资150万美元，1889年建成。法国传统美的捍卫者们是否为此下了地狱!Bonguereau，学院派画家;歌剧的建筑师Garnier;小说家小仲马;古诺,作曲家;诗人莱尔·勒孔特;普散文家;小说家居伊?德?莫泊桑(Guy de Maupassant)都签署了一封响亮的愤怒抗议信，向公共工程部长提出抗议，试图阻止“恐怖”。居伊·德·莫泊桑从不心软，尽可能多地在塔上吃午饭，这样就不必去看它了。他说得有道理，因为埃菲尔铁塔在巴黎占据了主导地
位，在巴黎的任何地方都能看到它，除了在它的一家餐厅里。
If La Tour was an insult to the representatives of the “effete class”, it was love at first sight for the people. Two million of them flocked to visit it during its first year. More than half of them reached its top. Thousands climbed the 1671 steps before the elevators were open to the public. The crowds increased even long after the exhibition closed and, slowly but surely, their visits acquired new meanings. They went to look at the Tower as much as to look from it, to look inside, at its filigree of steel, as much as to point out the other monuments of their city. It became the symbol of Paris, the Mecca of all travelers, visited by far more people than Notre Dame or Sacre Coeur. And then it became, somehow, the symbol of France. Tourist posters ignored virtually all else. The “new” poets, writers, painters and musicians exalted its shape, its lightness, its infinitely widening significance. It became the subject of 51 paintings by Delaunay, the initiator of the dismembered visual image, who drew it simultaneously from top and bottom, right and left. Hitler vowed to destroy it. The Resistance fighters of World War II hoisted the tricolor from its top while the Nazi panzer divisions were still battling American tanks in the streets of Paris. The Algerian rebels planned to dynamite it, as did their French right-wing military opponents, both in vain. By then the Tower and become like a mountain that always was and will always be. Paris would be inconceivable without it. Surpassed in height by many a modern utilitarian tower, by chimneys, antennas and skyscrapers, it is still the Tower of Towers. Of no other man-made structure can one say that it transcended technology to become a great human symbol.
如果说拉图尔是对“颓废阶级”代表的一种侮辱，那就是对人民的一见钟情。第一年就有两百万游客蜂拥而至。超过一半的人达到了顶峰。在电梯对公众开放之前，成千上万的人爬上了1671级台阶。甚至在展览结束后很久，人群还在增加，他们的参观也获得了新的意义，虽然缓慢但肯定。他们不仅要从塔上往里看，也要从塔上往里看，看它那金银丝般的钢铁结构，还要指出这座城市的其他纪念碑。它成为巴黎的象征，所有旅行者的麦加，参观人数远远超过圣母或圣心大教堂。后来，不知怎么的，它成了法国的象征。游客海报几乎忽略了其他一切。“新”诗人、作家、画家和音乐家对它的形状、它的轻盈、它无限扩大的意义给予了高度的评价。它成为了被肢解的视觉图像的发起者德劳内(Delaunay) 51幅画作的主题。德劳内同时从上到下、从右到左绘制了这幅图像。希特勒发誓要摧毁它。当纳粹装甲师仍在巴黎街头
与美国坦克作战时，第二次世界大战的抵抗战士从塔顶升起了三色旗。阿尔及利亚叛军计划炸毁它，他们的法国右翼军事对手也这样做，但都是徒劳的。到那时，这座塔就会变成一座山，过去是，将来也是。没有它，巴黎将是不可想象的。在高度上被许多现代实用主义的塔楼、烟囱、天线和摩天大楼所超越，它仍然是塔楼中的塔楼。没有任何其他人造建筑能超越技术成为人类的伟大象征。
Unit 7 Active reading (2) / P143 The meaning of architecture
In the sense that architecture is the process between the design and the organization of space in some way (creating a building or laying out a park), architecture can be seen as a medium of communication, or a form of language. And like language, architecture can be prose or poetry. Architecture can result in a simple garden shed, for example, where the function of the building can be expressed as a need for shelter and storage. The architectural language is simple, there is relatively little ambiguity even if regional variation and interpretation arises (an English garden shed is different from an American den).
从某种意义上说，建筑是设计和空间组织之间的过程(建造一座建筑或规划一个公园)，建筑可以被视为一种交流媒介，或一种语言形式。和语言一样，建筑可以是散文，也可以是诗歌。建筑可以产生一个简单的花园小屋，例如，建筑的功能可以表达为对庇护所和存储空间的需求。建筑语言简单，即使出现地区差异和解释，也很少有歧义(英式花园小屋不同于美式小屋)。
But it’s equally possible for architecture, like language, to have a more dense outcome, like a poem, in which patterns are laid one on another, overlapping each other on the same space. Its meaning becomes complex and profound. Those of us who have ever marveled at, say, a Gothic cathedral in Western and Central Europe, will recognize how layer after layer of patterns, materials, shapes and textures are contained within its soaring walls and become filled with meanings, almost too many to contemplate. Its effects were designed to draw the eyes of men below to the ceiling above
and contemplate the heavens beyond.
但是同样的，建筑也有可能，像语言一样，有一个更密集的结果，像一首诗，其中的模式是一个接一个的，在同一个空间里相互重叠。它的意义变得复杂而深远。我们这些曾经惊叹于西欧和中欧哥特式大教堂的人，将会认识到，一层又一层的图案、材料、形状和纹理是如何包含在高耸的墙壁里，并被赋予了几乎太多的意义。它的效果是为了吸引下面人们的眼睛到上面的天花板和凝视天空。
But architecture as a process and a means has other meanings. So much of architecture has the best intention of creating pleasure or a sense of satisfaction, even if it doesn’t always succeed. It may be the moderate pleasure of combining form with function. The shanty towns in Rio or Mumbai demonstrate an organic architecture which has no overall layout or prescribed plan, and no obvious logic, but its function is to protect and shelter the inhabitants who would otherwise live in discomfort on the streets.
但是，建筑作为一种过程和手段还有其他含义。很多建筑都有创造快乐或满足感的最佳意图，即使它并不总是成功。它可能是形式与功能结合的适度乐趣。里约热内卢或孟买的棚户区展示了一种有机的建筑，没有整体布局或规定的计划，也没有明显的逻辑，但它的功能是保护和庇护居民，否则他们将生活在不适的街道上。
Presumably, even the architects who designed the tower blocks of flats in the war-damaged cities of Britain in the 1960s and 1970s aspired to combine the economy of space to the maximum effect and for the benefit and pleasure of the people who were going to live there. There was nothing malign about their intentions, even though they were over-optimistic about the simplicity of imposing a new relationship between the space and the occupiers. In the end, it wasn’t the neo-brutalism of the style or the materials – square forms made of reinforced concrete, often located with little or no regard to the environment, and rising 20 or 30 floors into the cloudy British skies – which brought criticism and soon on this modernist architecture. It was the absence of gardens, shops and a sense of community which challenged and finally defeated this idealistic attempt to define a new way of living in cities.