(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
I'm Phoebe Zimmerman. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program People in America. Today we tell about the life and work of the greatest American building designer of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings for more than seventy years. He did most of his work from nineteen hundred through the nineteen fifties. He designed houses, schools, churches, public buildings, and office buildings. Critics say Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America's most creative architects. One critic said his ideas were fifty years ahead of the time in which he lived.
Frank Lloyd Wright was born in eighteen- sixty seven in the middle western state of Wisconsin. He studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin. In eighteen eighty seven, he went to the city of Chicago. He got a job in the office of the famous architects, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler.
Several years later, Wright established his own building design business. He began by designing homes for people living in and near Chicago. These homes were called "prairie houses." Prairie houses were long and low. They seemed to grow out of the ground. They were built of wood and other natural materials. The indoors expanded to the outdoors by extending the floor. This created what seemed like a room without walls or a roof. In nineteen-oh-two, Wright designed one prairie house, called the Willits House, in the town of Highland Park. The house was shaped like a cross. It was built around a huge fireplace. The rooms were designed so they seemed to flow into each other. Visitors to Chicago can see another of Wright's prairie houses. It is called the Robie House. It looks like a series of long, low rooms on different levels. The rooms seem to float over the ground. Wright designed everything in the house, including the furniture and floor coverings. Wright's prairie houses had a great influence on home design in America. Even today, one hundred years later, his prairie houses appear very modern.
In the nineteen thirties, Wright developed what he called "Usonian" houses. Usonia was his name for a perfect, democratic United States of America. Usonian houses were planned to be low cost. Wright designed them for the American middle class. These are the majority of Americans who are neither very rich nor very poor. Frank Lloyd Wright believed that all middle class families in America should be able to own a house that was designed well. He believed that the United States could not be a true democracy if people did not own their own house on their own piece of land. Usonian houses were built on a flat base of concrete. The base was level with the ground. Wright believed that was better and less costly than the common method of digging a hole in the ground for the base. Low-cost houses based on the Usonian idea became very popular in America in the nineteen fifties. Visitors can see one of Wright's Usonian homes near Washington, D. C. It is the Pope-Leighy House in Alexandria, Virginia.
Frank Lloyd Wright believed in spreading his ideas to young building designers. In nineteen thirty two, he established a school called the Taliesin Fellowship. Architectural students paid to live and work with him. During the summer, they worked at his home near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Wright called this house "Taliesin." That is a Welsh name meaning "shining brow." It was built of stone and wood into the top of a hill. During the winter, they worked at Taliesin West. This was Wright's home and architecture office near Phoenix, Arizona. Wright and his students started building it in nineteen thirty-seven in the Sonoran Desert. Taliesin West is an example of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas of organic architecture taking root in the desert. He believed that architecture should have life and spirit. He said a building should appear to grow naturally and easily from its base into its surroundings. Selecting the best place to put a building became a most important first step in the design process.
Frank Lloyd Wright had discovered the beauty of the desert in nineteen twenty-seven when he was asked to help with the design of the Arizona Biltmore hotel. He continued to return to the desert with his students to escape the harsh winters in Wisconsin. Ten years later he found a perfect place for his winter home and school. He bought about three hundred hectares of desert land at the foot of the McDowell Mountains near Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright said: " I was struck by the beauty of the desert, by the dry, clear sun-filled air, by the stark geometry of the mountains." He wanted everyone who visited Taliesin West to feel this same sense of place. His architecture students helped him gather rocks and sand from the desert floor to use as building materials. They began a series of buildings that became home, office and school. Wright kept working on and changing what he called a building made of many buildings for twenty years. Today, Taliesin West has many low stone buildings linked together by walkways and courtyards. It is still very much alive with activity. About seventy people live, work and study there. Guides take visitors through what is one of America's most important cultural treasures.
In nineteen thirty seven, Wright designed a house near the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is a fine example of his idea of organic architecture. The house is called "Fallingwater." It sits on huge rocks next to a small river. It extends over a waterfall. From one part of the house, a person can step down a stairway over the water. "Fallingwater" is so unusual and so beautiful that it came to represent modern American architecture. One critic calls it the greatest house of the twentieth century. Like Taliesin West, "Fallingwater" is open to the public.
Frank Lloyd Wright also is famous for designing imaginative public buildings. In nineteen oh four, he designed an office building for the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo, New York. The offices were organized around a tall open space. At the top was a glass roof to let sunlight into the center.
In the late nineteen thirties, Wright designed an office building for the Johnson Wax Company in Racine, Wisconsin. It also had one great room without traditional walls or windows. The outside of the building was made of smooth, curved brick and glass. In nineteen forty three, Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his most famous projects: the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City. The building was completed in nineteen sixty, the year following his death.
The Guggenheim is unusual because it is a circle. Inside the museum, a walkway rises in a circle from the lowest floor almost to the top. Visitors move along this walkway to see the artwork on the walls. The Guggenheim museum was very different from Wright's other designs. It even violated one of his own rules of design: the Guggenheim's shape is completely different from any of the buildings around it.
When Wright was a very old man, he designed the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, near San Francisco. The Civic Center project was one of his most imaginative designs. It is a series of long buildings between two hills. Frank Lloyd Wright believed that architecture is life itself taking form. "Therefore," he said, "it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today, or ever will be lived." Frank Lloyd Wright died in nineteen fifty-nine, in Phoenix, Arizona. He was ninety one years old. His buildings remain a record of the best of American Twentieth Century culture.
重点解析
1.ahead of 在...之前
Two boys were ahead of us.
有两个男孩在我们前面。
2.expand 扩张
We have to expand the size of the image.
我们不得不扩大图像的尺寸。
3.prairie 草原；大牧场
A single spark can start a prairie fire.
星星之火，可以燎原。
4.The rooms were designed so they seemed to flow into each other.
flow into 流入
Rivers flow into the sea.
江河流入海中。
5.The rooms seem to float over the ground.
float 漂浮
They noticed fifty and twenty dollar bills floating in the water.
他们注意到水中漂浮着一些50和20美元的纸币。
6.I was struck by the beauty of the desert, by the dry, clear sun-filled air, by the stark geometry of the mountains.
be struck by 被...触动；迷惑
One cannot but be struck by the enthusiasm of the representatives present.
人们不能不被到场的代表们的热情所感动。
参考译文
我是菲比·齐默曼。我是史蒂夫·恩贝尔。这里是VOA慢速英语栏目《美国人物志》。今天我们将要讲述20世纪美国最伟大的设计师弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特的故事和作品。弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特有着七十多年的建筑设计生涯。他的作品多数出自1900年至1950年代。他设计过房子、学校、教堂、公共建筑和办公大楼。评论家认为弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特是美国最具创造力的建筑师之一。一名评论家曾说他的想法比他所生活的年代超前了50年。
1867年，弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特出生于威斯康星州的中部地区。他在威斯康星大学学习工程学。1887年，他来到芝加哥市。他在著名建筑师路易斯·沙利文和丹克马尔·阿德勒的办公室里工作。几年后，赖特建立起了自己的建筑设计事业。开始他为居住在芝加哥及附近的人设计房子。这些房子被称为“草原式住宅”。草原式住宅很长且矮。它们像是从地面生长出来一样，由木头和其他天然材料建造。内部构造通过延伸楼层扩展至外部。这样的建造看起来像是一个没有墙壁或屋顶的房间。1902年，赖特设计了一幢草原式住宅，其被称为威立茨住宅，位于高地公园。这幢住宅的形状类似一个十字架。其房间的设计看起来像是彼此流通一样。前往芝加哥的游客可以看到赖特的另一座草原式住宅—罗比住宅。罗比住宅看起来像是在不同水平线上的一系列长且矮的房间。这些房间像是浮于地面一样。住宅内的一切都是赖特设计的，包括家具和地板。赖特的草原式住宅对美国房屋设计有着巨大的影响。甚至在百年后的今天，他的草原式住宅看起来仍然非常现代化。
1930年代，赖特发展了所谓的“美国风住宅”。美国风住宅代表完美、民主的美国。美国风住宅建筑成本较低。这是赖特为美国中产阶级设计的。美国大部分人既非非常富有也非非常贫穷。弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特认为美国所有中产阶级都应该能够拥有一幢属于自己的且设计完美的住宅。他认为如果美国人在这块土地上没有属于自己的房子，美国就不是真正的民主。美国风住宅建于混凝土平地上。地基和地面齐平。赖特认为这样比在地面上挖个洞作为地基要更好且成本更低。1950年代，基于美国风住宅这个想法的低成本住宅非常受欢迎。游客们可以在华盛顿附近欣赏赖特美国风住宅之一—位于弗吉尼亚州亚历山大市的Pope-Leighy House。弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特认为要将他的想法传递给年青一代的建筑设计师。1932年，他创立了一所学校—Taliesin设计团体。建筑学学生付费在这里和他一起生活工作。夏天，他们在他位于威斯康星州斯普林格林附近的家中工作。赖特将这个房子称为“塔里辛”。这是一个威尔士名字，意味着“闪耀的顶部”。这个房子是由石头和木头建成伸展至小山丘的顶部。冬天，他们在西塔里辛工作。这是赖特的家和建筑办公室，位于美国亚利桑那州凤凰城。
赖特和他的学生于1937年在索诺兰沙漠开始建造。西塔里辛是弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特让有机建筑在沙漠生根这一想法的实例。他相信建筑应该是有生命和灵魂的。他说一幢建筑应该能够自然轻易地从周围物中生长。选择一个安置建筑的最佳地点成为设计过程中最重要的一步。1927年，当有人要求弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特帮忙设计亚利桑那比尔特莫酒店时，他发现了沙漠的美丽。他继续返回沙漠和学生们一起逃避威斯康星州寒冷的冬天。十年后，他发现了建造过冬家园和学校的完美地点。他买下了约300公顷的沙漠土地，地点位于美国亚利桑那州斯科茨代尔附近的麦克道威山脚下。赖特说：“我被沙漠的美丽所迷住了，沙漠干燥、充满阳光的清新空气以及群山的荒凉的构造。”他希望每个人都去参观西塔里辛，去感受这个地方同样的场所感。他的学生帮助他从沙漠里收集岩石和沙子当做建筑材料。他们开始了一系列建筑的建造最终成为了房屋、办公室和学校。二十多年来，赖特一直钻研和改变所谓的由多种建筑变为一种建筑的想法。如今西塔里辛有很多矮石建筑和通道庭院相连。现在看来仍然鲜活。约有70人在这里生活、工作和学习。向导带领游客穿过美国最重要的文化宝藏之一。1937年，赖特在宾夕法尼亚州的匹兹堡附近设计了一幢房屋。这是他有机建筑想法最好的例子，这幢房子被称为“落水山庄”。其位于一条小溪边巨大的岩石上，并向瀑布延伸。从房子的一边，一个人可以走下楼梯越过水流。落水山庄非常不同，也非常漂亮，它是现代美国建筑的代表。一名评论家称这是20世纪最好的住宅。和西塔里辛一样，落水山庄也对公众开放。
弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特也因设计赋予想象力的公众建筑而出名。1904年，他为位于纽约布法罗的拉金公司设计办公大楼。办公室围绕高高的空旷空间而建。顶部是玻璃屋顶，阳光能射入中心。1930年代后期，赖特为位于威斯康星州拉辛的美国庄臣公司设计办公楼。其中还有一间不带传统墙壁或窗户的房间。这幢建筑的外部有柔软弯曲的砖头和玻璃制成。1943年，弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特设计了他最著名的项目之一：纽约市的古根海姆美术馆。该建筑于1960年完工，这是他去世的第二年。古根海姆美术馆的不同之处在于，它是环形的。博物馆内部，环形内最底部的一条通道通向顶部。游客们沿这条通道，观看墙上的艺术品。古根海姆美术馆和赖特的其他设计非常不同。其甚至违反了他的建筑法则之一：古根海姆美术馆的形状和其周围的任何一个建筑都不同。老年的赖特设计了位于旧金山附近加利福尼亚圣拉斐尔的马林郡市政中心。市政中心项目是他最具创造性的设计之一。这是两山之间的一系列长型建筑。弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特认为这幢建筑是自己成型的生命。“因此，”他说，“这是生命最真实的记录，因为它存活于昨天的世界、今天的世界甚至永生。”1959年，弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特在美国亚利桑那州凤凰城去世，享年91岁。他的建筑仍是美国20世纪文化的最佳记录。
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