The last skyscraper built in Paris opened in 1973, an unadorned dark block, rising 59 stories — the Montparnasse Tower. It was considered a disaster. To this day, Parisians joke that the tower offers the best views in the city, because it is the only place from which you cannot see it. City officials went to work banning future skyscrapers altogether.
巴黎的最后一个摩天大楼是1973年揭幕的蒙帕纳斯大厦(Montparnasse Tower)，它是一座楼高59层、朴素的黑色大楼。它被认为是一个灾难。直至今日，巴黎人仍爱开玩笑说，这座大楼的视野是全城最好的，因为只有在这里你看不见它。市政府后来干脆禁止再盖摩天大楼。

Now, however, four decades later, Paris is again considering a new skyscraper — a triangular, 42-story glass office tower designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron that would stand in the city’s southwest corner.
不过，四十年后，巴黎再度考虑建造摩天大楼——一座42层的三角形玻璃写字楼。它由瑞士建筑师雅克·赫尔佐格(Jacques Herzog )和皮埃尔·德默隆(Pierre de Meuron)设计，位于该市西南角。
Over the years, Parisians have come to embrace some of the city’s bolder architectural adventures, such as the glass pyramids inside of the Louvre courtyard or the Pompidou Center, built with its network of colorfully painted water pipes and air-conditioning ducts on the outside. But the resistance to skyscrapers has been fierce.
这些年来，巴黎人在建筑上开始接受一些更为大胆的尝试，比如卢浮宫庭院里的玻璃金字塔或蓬皮杜中心——这个建筑的外侧布满五颜六色的水管和空调管道网。但是人们对摩天大楼的抗拒依然强烈。
For some Parisians, the new proposal is another Montparnasse in the making, an architectural star turn that would further disfigure one of the city’s key selling points — an almost perfect 19th-century skyline.
有些巴黎人觉得这个新项目在走蒙帕纳斯大厦的老路，会进一步削弱这座城市的一个关键卖点——几近完美的19世纪天际线。
For the last few decades, they say, the city has done very nicely by keeping office towers outside the city limits in areas like La Défense, on its western edge, now a forest of glass and steel.
他们说，过去几十年，这座城市成功地把写字楼排除在市区范围之外，集中在西侧的拉德芳斯等地区，那里现在是玻璃钢筋的森林。
But in these trying times, with the country’s economy moribund, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has been arguing otherwise, delighted to see such a huge private investment in an area of Paris that, at the moment, is not much to look at.
但如今时势艰难，该国经济停滞不前，所以巴黎市长安妮·伊达尔戈(Anne Hidalgo)对此持不同态度，她乐于在目前相貌平平的一个巴黎区域看到这样一个巨大的私人投资项目。
For now, the area is a collection of conference centers that lie between the highway that runs around the city periphery and a not particularly distinguished residential neighborhood in the 15th Arrondissement, near the Porte de Versailles.
目前，这个地区集中了很多会议中心，它们位于环绕市中心的高速公路和第15区凡尔赛门附近一个不太显眼的住宅区之间。
The tower would provide 5,000 construction jobs, city officials say. It would offer marquee office space that could attract new companies to establish headquarters here. Backed by Unibail-Rodamco, a top European property developer, the Triangle Tower would cost about 500 million euros, or about $627 million.
市政府官员称，这座大厦将提供5000个建筑工作机会。它将提供宽敞的办公空间，吸引新公司在这里建总部。这座三角形大厦由欧洲顶级地产开发商尤尼百-洛当科集团(Unibail-Rodamco)投资，将耗资约五亿欧元，约合6.27亿美元。
“There are many selling points to this project,” said Jean-Louis Missika, the city’s deputy mayor for architecture and urbanism. “It would be an important economic development for the city.”
“这个项目有很多卖点，”巴黎市负责建筑和城市化的副市长让-路易斯·米西卡(Jean-Louis Missika)说，“它将是这座城市的一个重要经济增长点。”
Mr. Missika argues that a project like the new tower would act as a kind of lighthouse, giving distinction to the entire neighborhood, as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, prompted a rejuvenation of that city.
米西卡认为，新大楼这样的项目将具有灯塔作用，给整个街区带来亮点，正如弗兰克·盖里(Frank Gehry)设计的古根海姆博物馆给西班牙毕尔巴鄂带来活力。
Nonetheless, the project came close to dying this week as it failed to garner enough votes in the City Council. But as the vote came to an end, the winners made the mistake of brandishing their “no” ballots, making public what was supposed to be a private poll — and giving Ms. Hidalgo an opening to bring the whole matter to court.
不过，本周这个项目差点胎死腹中，因为它在市议会没有得到足够的票数。但是在投票接近尾声时，获胜方犯了个错，他们炫耀自己的“否决”票，公开了这个本该私密的投票，伊达尔戈因此可以把整件事提交法庭。
The vote was close, 78 to 83, pitting Ms. Hidalgo’s Socialist city councilors against those from the center right and the environmentalist parties. A little more time and a new vote, city officials believe, and the tower might yet be built.
票数很接近，78票对83票，伊达尔戈的社会党城市顾问对阵中右翼和环保主义党派。市政府官员们相信，再多给一点时间，再来一次新投票，这座大厦仍有可能修建。
Those against the project are furious at the mayor’s maneuver. “It the vote had gone the other way, you can be sure that the mayor would have been just fine with it,” said Olivier de Monicault, the president of SOS Paris, an association founded in the 1970s to oppose architectural projects, such as skyscrapers, that it believed would destroy Paris’s distinct heritage.
反对该项目的人士对市长的操纵感到愤怒。“如果投票结果是相反的，市长肯定不会去管，”拯救巴黎协会(SOS Paris)的主席奥利维尔·德·莫尼科(Olivier de Monicault)说。该协会创立于20世纪70年代，旨在反对它认为破坏巴黎独特遗产的建筑项目，比如摩天大楼。
Mr. de Monicault said there were all kinds of arguments to be made against the tower, including that it was not a tower, but a wall that would cast a huge shadow on the surrounding neighborhood.
莫尼科说，反对修建这座大厦有很多原因，比如，它不是个大厦，而是一面墙，会令周围街区见不到阳光。
But perhaps most fundamental, he said, is the fear of doing damage to the look and feel of the city: “Tourists do not come here to see Manhattan,” he said.
但他说，也许最根本的原因是担心它破坏这座城市的外貌和感觉，“游客来这里不是为了看曼哈顿”。
Leading the charge against the tower in the City Council was Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, from the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, who ran for mayor against Ms. Hidalgo this year and lost.
在市议会反对修建该大厦的领导者是中右翼人民运动联盟(Union for a Popular Movement)的娜塔莉·科希丘什科-莫里泽(Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet)。她今年竞选市长一职败北。
Ms. Kosciusko-Morizet said the city’s experience with solitary towers had proved them disastrous. “They overwhelm the neighborhood,” she said.
科希丘什科-莫里泽说，这座城市的历史证明，孤零零的高楼是灾难性的，“它们压制了周围地区”。
Moreover, she said, the tower would only help signal the edge of the city at a time when Paris is trying to reach across the highway that encircles it to better integrate the neighborhoods beyond.
她说，况且，这座大楼只会帮助标记这座城市的边界，而此时巴黎正在努力突破环绕它的高速路，想与周围地区更好地融合。
“We are not against modernity,” Ms. Kosciusko-Morizet said, “but this is not about modernity. What we are hearing is the same arguments that got us the Montparnasse Tower. There is nothing unique here. All the cities in the world have glass towers. There is nothing inventive here.”
“我们不是反对现代化，”科希丘什科-莫里泽说，“但这不是现代化。他们给出的理由跟当初主张修建蒙帕纳斯大厦的理由是一样的。它没有独特性。世界上所有的城市都有玻璃大楼。这毫无新意。”
Ms. Kosciusko-Morizet said she found the use of a secret vote to be particularly dishonest since such votes were never used except over issues of personnel nominations. She said her party members had objected to the secret ballot all along and said before the vote that they would not keep their votes private.
科希丘什科-莫里泽说，采用秘密投票的方式太不诚实了，因为这种投票方式仅用于人事提名。她说自己的党派成员一直反对秘密投票，投票之前就表示不会对投票保密。
A poll conducted last year by the B.V.A. polling agency found that most Parisians — 62 percent — were against any new skyscrapers, even if for much-needed new housing. Often it seems it is the younger Parisians who are more inclined to see the new Triangle Tower in a positive light.
去年，民调机构B.V.A.进行的一项调查发现，大多数巴黎人——多达62%——反对新建任何摩天大楼，甚至包括有迫切需求的新住宅大楼。巴黎的年轻人似乎更倾向于从正面角度看待新的三角大楼。
“For me it makes economic sense,” said Ralph Hippocrate, 28, a publicist for a French television channel. “For jobs it might create, but also for the good it might do for the businesses in the neighborhood.”
“在我看来，它具有经济意义，”28岁的拉尔夫·希波克拉底(Ralph Hippocrate)说。他是法国一个电视频道的宣传人员。“因为它可能创造就业机会，也可能有利于周围的商业。”
But many older Parisians fear that city officials did not learn the lesson of Montparnasse, a building that regularly makes lists of the 10 ugliest buildings in the world. They believe that skyscrapers are simply out of place in the heart of Paris.
但是很多年长的巴黎人担心，市政府官员没有接受蒙帕纳斯大厦的教训——该建筑经常被列入世界上最丑陋的十大建筑榜单。他们认为，在巴黎市中心建摩天大楼就是不合适。
“We are not in Dubai,” said Danielle Outreman, 60, who is retired. “I like it that in Paris I am not surrounded by enormous buildings. I think that putting them all in La Défense is just fine.”
“我们不是在迪拜，”60岁的丹妮尔·奥特里曼(Danielle Outreman)说。她已经退休了。“在巴黎，我不喜欢被巨大的建筑包围。我觉得把大楼都盖到拉德芳斯区就挺好的。”