中英文资料翻译
1外文资料
The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered
The architects of this land and generation are now brought face to face with something new under the sun namely, that evolution and integration of social conditions, that special grouping of them, that results in a demand for the erection of tall office buildings.
It is not my purpose to discuss the social conditions; I accept them as the fact, and say at once that the design of the tall office building must be recognized and confronted at the outset as a problem to be solved a vital problem, pressing for a true solution.
Let us state the conditions in the plainest manner. Briefly, they are these: offices are necessary for the transaction of business; the invention and perfection of the high speed elevators make vertical travel, that was once tedious and painful, now easy and comfortable; development of steel manufacture has shown the way to safe, rigid, economical constructions rising to a great height; continued growth of population in the great cities, consequent congestion of centers and rise in value of ground, stimulate an increase in number of stories; these successfully piled one upon another, react on ground values and so on, by
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action and reaction, interaction and inter reaction. Thus has come about that form of lofty construction called the \office building\It has come in answer to a call, for in it a new grouping of social conditions has found a habitation and a name.
Up to this point all in evidence is materialistic, an exhibition of force, of resolution, of brains in the keen sense of the word. It is the joint product of the speculator, the engineer, the builder.
Problem: How shall we impart to this sterile pile, this crude, harsh, brutal agglomeration, this stark, staring exclamation of eternal strife, the graciousness of these higher forms of sensibility and culture that rest on the lower and fiercer passions? How shall we proclaim from the dizzy height of this strange, weird, modern housetop the peaceful evangel of sentiment, of beauty, the cult of a higher life?
This is the problem; and we must seek the solution of it in a process analogous to its own evolution indeed, a continuation of it namely, by proceeding step by step from general to special aspects, from coarser to finer considerations.
It is my belief that it is of the very essence of every problem that is contains and suggests its own solution. This I believe to be natural law. Let us examine, then, carefully the elements, let us search out this contained suggestion, this essence of the problem.
The practical conditions are, broadly speaking, these:
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Wanted 1st, a story below ground, containing boiler, engines of various sorts, etc. in short, the plant for power, heating, lighting, etc. 2nd, a ground floor, so called, devoted to stores, banks, or other establishments requiring large area, ample spacing, ample light, and great freedom of access, 3rd, a second story readily accessible by stairways this space usually in large subdivisions, with corresponding liberality in structural spacing and expanse of glass and breadth of external openings, 4th, above this an indefinite number of stories of offices piled tier upon tier, one tier just like another tier, one office just like all the other offices an office being similar to a cell in honey comb, merely a compartment, nothing more, 5th, and last, at the top of this pile is placed a space or story that, as related to the life and usefulness of the structure, is purely physiological in its nature namely, the attic. In this the circulatory system completes itself and makes it grand turn, ascending and descending. The space is filled with tanks, pipes, valves, sheaves, and mechanical etcetera that supplement and complement the force originating plant hidden below ground in the cellar. Finally, or at the beginning rather, there must be on the ground floor a main aperture or entrance common to all the occupants or patrons of the building.
This tabulation is, in the main, characteristic of every tall office building in the country. As to the necessary arrangements for light courts, these are not germane to the problem, and as will become soon evident, I trust need not be considered here. These things, and such others as the arrangement of elevators, for example, have to do strictly with the economics of the building, and I assume
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them to have been fully considered and disposed of to the satisfaction of purely utilitarian and pecuniary demands. Only in rare instances does the plan or floor arrangement of the tall office building take on an aesthetic value, and thus usually when the lighting court is external or becomes an internal feature of great importance.
As I am here seeking not for an individual or special solution, but for a true normal type, the attention must be confined to those conditions that, in the main, are constant in all tall office buildings, and every mere incidental and accidental variation eliminated from the consideration, as harmful to the clearness of the main inquiry.
The practical horizontal and vertical division or office unit is naturally based on a room of comfortable area and height, and the size of this standard office room as naturally predetermines the standard structural unit, and, approximately, the size of window openings. In turn, these purely arbitrary units of structure form in an equally natural way the true basis of the artistic development of the exterior. Of course the structural spacings and openings in the first or mercantile story are required to be the largest of all; those in the second or quasi mercantile story are of a some what similar nature. The spacings and openings in the attic are of no importance whatsoever the windows have no actual value, for light may be taken from the top, and no recognition of a cellular division is necessary in the structural spacing.
Hence it follow inevitably, and in the simplest possible way, that if we
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follow our natural instincts without thought of books, rules, precedents, or any such educational impediments to a spontaneous and \the following manner design the exterior of our tall office building to wit: Beginning with the first story, we give this a min entrance that attracts the eye to it location, and the remainder of the story we treat in a more or less liberal, expansive, sumptuous way a way based exactly on the practical necessities, but expressed with a sentiment of largeness and freedom. The second story we treat in a similar way, but usually with milder pretension. Above this, throughout the indefinite number of typical office tiers, we take our cue from the individual cell, which requires a window with its separating pier, its still and lintel, and we, without more ado, make them look all alike because they are all alike. This brings us to the attic, which having no division into office cells, and no special requirement for lighting, gives us the power to show by means of its broad expanse of wall, and its dominating weight and character, that which is the fact namely, that the series of office tiers has come definitely to an end.
This may perhaps seem a bald result and a heartless, pessimistic way of stating it, but even so we certainly have advanced a most characteristic stage beyond the imagined sinister building of the speculator engineer builder combination. For the hand of the architect is now definitely felt in the decisive position at once taken, and the suggestion of a thoroughly sound, logical, coherent expression of the conditions is becoming apparent.
When I say the hand of the architect, I do not mean necessarily the
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土木工程高层建筑中英文对照外文翻译文献
