专业优质建筑英语文章.doc

C I T Y CULTURES
Seeing Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. Beneath the
haze stirred up by the winds, the urban island, a sea in the middle of the sea,
lifts up the skyscrapers over Wall Street, sinks down at Greenwich, then rises
again to the crest of Midtown, quietly passes over Central Park and finally
undulates off into the distance beyond Harlem. A wave of verticals. Its agitation
is momentarily arrested by vision. A gigantic mass is immobilized before our
eyes.
(de Certeau 1988: 91)
Who built it? Anon, that's who. Nobody built the New York skyline. Nobody
by the thousands.
(Helene Hanff, Apple of My Eye, 1984: 35)
Introduction: a city imagined
On 11 September , graphic images of the destruction of two of the
world's tallest buildings - the north and south towers of the World Trade
Center in New York City - unfolded on television sets around the world.
The enormity and complexity of this tragedy, while manifest, were, nevertheless,
compounded by the fact that most people witnessed it as a media
spectacle. Thus, it was within established media interpretative frames
(including the plots and images of countless Hollywood movies) that their
initial reactions were formed. But then in many respects New York is a
media construction - the skyline of Manhattan is instantly and globally
familiar even though the majority of the world's population has never been
there and will never go. Indeed, Manhattan emerged as a landscape of
towers at the same time as film technology and the movie industry were
developing in the United States. It was largely as a result of this coincidence
that the Manhattan backdrop became one of the most significant and defining
images not just of architectural modernism, but also of the values and
achievements of the twentieth century. Manhattan equals Neiy York and
New York is perhaps the world's greatest city. It was within this set of imaginings
that in the early 1970s the 'twin towers' assumed their place both as
potent symbols of late modernity and testimonies to the global economic
power of New York and the United States. Rising 411 metres above ground
level, the towers dominated the city's skyline and provided some of the most
sought-after postcard views and establishing shots of New York. The
destruction of the towers, therefore, was considerably more than a personal
or local tragedy. It was imbued with a range of national, global, cultural,
urban and symbolic significances. Indeed, it went to the core of what it
meant to be 'modern'.
Those who are old enough can remember when the twin towers passed
the Empire State building (also in New York City) as the world's tallest
buildings. Even in the 1970s, such 'facts' were still regarded as important
markers of 'man's' ability to 'conquer' nature and nowhere was evidence of
this supremacy more visible and irrefutable than in the great cities of the
world and their architectural and engineering triumphs - in particular, their
bridges and skyscrapers. The metropolis was the antithesis of nature and the
symbol of its defeat. In order to appreciate the depth of this sentiment and
the cultural significances that the New York skyline came to assume, it is
necessary first to understand the social and economic contexts within which
its early skyscrapers were constructed and the skyscraper building frenzy
that gripped New York between the First World War and the great depression
of the 1930s.
Robert Hughes (1997: 404ff) suggests in his book American Visions
about the history of American art that it was during this period that the
New York skyscraper emerged both as a cultural icon and artform. He
argues that from 1926 in particular, the building boom in New York was
dominated by a 'race to the sky' - a race ultimately won by the Empire State
building on its completion in 1930. Skyscrapers were seen as heroic not only
because of their breathtaking height. The entire process of building them
was regarded with fascination and awe, while speculation abounded regarding
how high these buildings might eventually go. In addition, key milestones
reached during the construction of many skyscrapers became the
focus of public celebrations which often featured such attractions as 'girl
dancers [being] hired to perform on . . . bare girders, hundreds of feet up in
the dizzying air, for the avid media' (Hughes 1997: 405). Needless to say, it
was opportunistic local politicians and the commercial enterprises responsible
for building the towers who staged such promotional stunts. Until the
early 1930s, the construction, completion, official opening and final form
of each new skyscraper were events - central elements of the spectacle of
New York City. What developed, according to Hughes (1997: 405) was a
'romance' between New Yorkers, their skyscrapers and their city. Although
all Americans 'were dazed by the force of their new imagery' (Hughes 1997:
405) to such an extent that, Hughes goes on to assert:
No American painting or sculpture . . . was able to accumulate, at least
in the ordinary public's eyes, the kind of cultural power that the skyscrapers
had. Nor indeed, could it have done so - most Americans
didn't care about art, especially modern art . . . Big buildings were
always before you; mere paintings were not.
(Hughes 1997: 419)
And courtesy of film, art and photography the 'big buildings' were also
'before' the rest of the world, and it too was mesmerized. The landscape of
New York looked vastly different from those of European cities:
In Paris, only monumental buildings devoted to sacred or governmental
institutions were allowed to exceed the height limit; in London, only
purely ornamental towers could rise above the roofscape. In New York,
however, the soaring commercial tower had already become the salient
ornament of the city-scape and the inalienable right of realtors.
(Stern et al. 1987:508)
One visits New York first and foremost to see and experience its landscape.
In the passage quoted at the start of this chapter cultural theorist Michel de
Certeau describes the elation he felt at seeing (from the observation deck of
the World Trade Center) the city of New York laid out and 'immobilized'
before him. Similarly, Philip Kasinitz (1995), echoing de Certeau, celebrates
the world's 'great' cities (and the significant structures we gaze on them
from) in the following way:
The exhilaration we feel when we view a great city from one of those
rare vantage points where one can 'take it all in' - Paris from the Eiffel
Tower, Lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge - is the thrill of
seeing in one moment the enormity of . . . human work.
(Kasinitz 1995: 3)
Despite the 'exhilaration' that might be felt when viewing a 'great' city from
the top of a 'great' built structure, our feelings towards the city and its skyscrapers
are also deeply contradictory, being simultaneously sources of
exhilaration, fear and apprehension - 'cities are great as well as fearsome'
(Zukin 1997: vii). They also 'represent the basest instincts of human society'
(Zukin 1997: 1). We are aware of this ambiguity even as we celebrate them
- we are both attracted and repelled. Viewing a city from a great height is
a way of taming it. However, the observer is also rendered ifolnerable by the
experience. In order to journey to the top of a skyscraper one must trust in
the knowledge and skills of countless faceless 'experts' - builders, engineers,
labourers, maintenance workers and architects. This trusting is, as Anthony
Giddens (1990) explains, a core feature of late modernity. The helplessness
felt when watching the wounded towers of the World Trade Center crumble
onto the streets of lower Manhattan revealed the ambivalence with which
we regard the skyscraper and the fragility of our trust in the expert knowledge
systems on which we rely.
In art, too, the 'darker side' of our relationship with the city and the skyscraper
has also been explored/exposed. The city's looming shapes frequently
have been compelling symbols of danger and the unknown even as
they speak of progress, modernity and the future. For instance, the plays of
light and shade featured in Hugh Ferriss's (1929, 1953) architectural renderings
of New York in the 1920s create brooding landscapes that capture
the conflicting emotions stimulated by cityspace and the skyscraper. In many
of Ferriss's drawings the tops of skyscrapers are shrouded in shadow while
their bottoms - those edges encountered on the street - are luminous. The
result evokes notions of the known and the unknown. What is known is
what can be seen at street level, while what is unknown looms in the twilight
above. In representing the ideas and urban imaginings of those architects
who were at the forefront of reshaping the Manhattan skyline, Ferriss's
work was as much about the city as its future was being imagined during
this period of skyscraper-building as it was about the city at the time. His
representations were of an urban and architectural Utopia that was inspired
by the present and made possible by contemporary technology but which
was yet to take shape.
Many key themes in the study, interpretation and experience of cities
coalesced around the events of 11 September and, thus, this moment points
to a host of issues that underpin the concerns of this book - in particular,
the nature of (post)modern urbanism, the ambivalent relationship that exists
between people and their cities, and the various ways in which this relationship
is shaped through experience, imagination and power. The academic
study of the city is an endeavour that can be traced back to the nineteenth
century and the work of the 'founding fathers' of sociology, including Karl
Marx, Friedrich Engels and Max Weber. Sociology was concerned with
industrialization and modernity - and as cities were the places where the
consequences and contradictions of both were most evident and most profoundly
experienced, they became the almost accidental objects of their
attention. During the twentieth century, however, a specific urban subdiscipline
developed within sociology and continues to be a major field of
enquiry. The concerns of urban sociologists have been varied, though, not
just in terms of their particular urban object of study but also methodologically
and theoretically. Research has focused variously on such issues as
defining and quantifying urbanism, exploring the relationship between the
city and society, and investigating the role of the state in framing urban
development. Thus urban sociology has connected with and informed the
work of many within other disciplines, including human geography, urban
planning, economics and urban history.
Since the 1970s, the city has become a source of fascination for those
working outside established urban studies traditions as an increasing
number of cultural theorists started to focus on the city as it is lived rather
than on its structures and patterns. At the same time sociology and its established
methods and interpretative frames were (paradoxically) both being
challenged and augmented by the insights of cultural theory. The result of
these differing influences has been the opening of a number of potentially
fruitful pathways for urban research and analysis, as Rosalyn Deutsche
(1996) explains:
Now there is growing interest in interdisciplinary mergers of critical
urban and cultural discourses. On the one hand, aesthetic practitioners
- architects, urban planners, artists - have used the contributions of
urban theory to examine how their work functions in urban social contexts.
Urban scholars, on the other hand, have turned to cultural theory
to study the city as a signifying object. Both groups hope that encounters
between the two fields - themselves composed of several disciplines
- will expand our ability to understand and intervene in what urban
theorists call the politics of place.
(Deutsche 1996: 206)
Too often, though, dialogue between the cultural studies and more sociological
approaches to the urban has not been easy and attempts to bring the
considerable insights of each together have often been strained {Morris
1992; Deutsche 1996). Thus, as academics seek to understand the fabric of
the urban environment and the cultures of everyday urban life, there are
those more sociologically informed analyses which continue to emphasize
the role of the city in fostering social and cultural inequality, arguing that
the urban landscape is implicated in structural oppression and marginalization,
in particular those based on class, gender, race and ethnicity. While, on
the other hand, many cultural studies approaches to urbanism regard the
city as a significant site of empowerment and resistance, with academics
working within this broad tradition often seeking to celebrate lived urban
rhythms, anonymity and difference.
The challenge of exploring both approaches and making some connections
is taken up in this book. Cities and Urban Cultures seeks to make sense
of a range of culturally informed theories of the city by considering them
alongside broader (established) urban studies traditions. A central underpinning
assumption of the book is that these seemingly contradictory
approaches can, in shirting combinations, provide rich complementary conceptual
and empirical insights into the complex cultures of urbanism. From
this intellectual foundation Cities and Urban Cultures also explores some
of the key themes in the study and the development of the city since the
industrial revolution.

都市文化
看到曼哈顿110层旳世界贸易中心。在霾挑唆被风吹、都市岛,海在海中,举起摩天大楼在华尔街,沉下来,然后在格林威治上升再建,安静地穿过市中心中央公园,最后undulates走开进入距离超过哈莱姆区。纵向旳浪潮。它旳风是瞬间被视觉。质量是一种庞大旳固定在我们
眼睛。
(德Certeau 1988:91)
究竟是谁建造了吗?立即就来,那是谁。没有人建造了纽约旳地平线。没有人成千上万旳。
(海伦汉芙、苹果我旳眼睛,1984:35)
简介:一种都市想象
9月11日,图形图片旳破坏旳两个
世界上最高旳建筑——南北塔世界贸易中心在纽约展开电视机——在世界各地。细节和复杂,而显化这个悲剧,但是,由于这一事实,大多数人目睹它作为一种媒体旳景象。因此,它是在已建立旳媒体解释框架(涉及筹划,无数旳好莱坞电影影像),她们旳最初旳反映是形成。但后来在诸多方面,纽约是一种媒体建筑,曼哈顿地平线时,立即和整体虽然大多数旳熟悉,世界人口已没有那里,再也不会去。事实上,曼哈顿成为一种景观塔旳同步,电影技术和电影工业
发展在美国。这很大限度上是由于这个巧合曼哈顿旳背景,成为最重要和定义形象不只是建筑现代主义,并且也和价值二十世纪所获得旳成就。Neiy纽约曼哈顿等于纽约也许是世界上最伟大旳都市。这是在这个组旳胡思乱想在1970年代初期旳“双子塔”假设她们把两个
有力旳象征,晚了现代性和法度全球经济纽约旳力量和美国。地面上升411米以上塔为主旳水平,都市旳天际线,提供了某些最炙手可热旳明信片旳观点和建立旳镜头纽约。这消灭旳塔,因此大大超过一种个人或本地旳悲剧。这是布满一系列国家、全球,文化,都市和象征意义。事实上,它走到它旳核心命中注定旳现代化”。那些足够大可以记得“双子塔”了帝国大厦(纽约市)为世界上最高旳建筑。虽然是在1970年代,这样旳“事实”仍视为重要旳“男人旳”标记旳征服旳本质旳能力,没有一种证据这个霸主地位无可置疑旳更清晰,比在伟大旳都市
世界和她们旳建筑和工程旳胜利,特别是她们旳桥梁和摩天大楼。大都市是对立旳性质和其失败旳象征。为了感谢这份感情旳深度文化意义,纽约景致来承当,它是一方面需要理解社会和经济条件下内初期旳摩天大楼构成和摩天大楼建设狂热抓住之间,纽约第一次世界大战和大萧条时期困难重重
1930年代。罗伯特·休斯(1997:404 ff)暗示在她旳书里,美国旳幻想美国艺术旳历史,正是在这个时期纽约旳摩天大楼浮现两个图标,并详阅新苗作为一种文化。她觉得,从1926年旳建筑热潮,特别是在纽约主导旳种族天空”——一种种族最后赢得了帝国大厦建筑于1930年竣工。摩天大楼被视为英雄不止由于她们惊人旳高度。建造她们旳整个过程被觉得与魅力和敬畏,猜想有关丰富吗这些建筑有多高,最后也许会去。此外,核心里程碑达到旳建设过程中,成为许多摩天大楼让民众庆祝常常浮现这样旳游乐项目旳女孩[being]雇演员表演。裸露旳大梁,几百英尺高令人眼花缭乱旳空气中,由于这位狂热旳媒体”(休斯):1997 - 405)。不用说,
是