Everywhere one ventures in cities, skyscrapers are being built or planned. Even Paris is getting one. The French capital last week backed plans for a 180-metre high triangular tower by Herzog & de Meuron of Switzerland, its first in four decades.
无论你去世界各地哪座城市，都可以看到那里正在建造或规划摩天大楼。甚至连巴黎都将拥有一座摩天大楼。日前，巴黎当局40年来首次批准了一个高楼项目，建造一座由瑞士赫尔佐格-德梅隆建筑公司(Herzog & de Meuron)设计、高180米的三角形塔楼。
There may never have been a better time to be an ambitious young architect. For an office skyscraper at the World Trade Center site in New York, James Murdoch, scion of the media dynasty, has just replaced a design by Britain’s venerable Lord Foster with a jazzier idea by Bjarke Ingels, the 40-year-old Danish architect.
对于一名雄心勃勃的年轻建筑师来说，生在这个时代可谓正逢其时。对于将在纽约世贸中心遗址建造的一栋摩天办公楼，世界最大传媒帝国接班人詹姆斯•默多克(James Murdoch)刚刚否决了英国建筑大师福斯特勋爵(Lord Foster)的设计，转而采用40岁的丹麦建筑师比亚克•英厄尔斯(Bjarke Ingels)的前卫创意。
There is plenty of work to go around for any global “starchitect” who can produce an iconic museum, office or residential tower from London to Chongqing. Mr Ingels is building a campus for Google with Thomas Heatherwick, the UK designer; Herzog & de Meuron are to remodel Chelsea’s football stadium; Rafael Viñoly is finishing an apartment block at 432 Park Avenue that is New York’s second-tallest building.
从伦敦到重庆，对任何能够设计标志性博物馆、办公楼或住宅大厦的全球“明星建筑师”来说，都有大量业务可供争取。英厄尔斯正在与英国设计师托马斯•赫斯维克(Thomas Heatherwick)一起为谷歌(Google)打造一个校园；赫尔佐格-德梅隆建筑公司将改造切尔西的足球场；拉菲尔•维诺里(Rafael Viñoly)即将完成纽约第二高楼——位于派克大街(Park Avenue) 432号的公寓大楼。
Every first-tier global city, and many a second and third-tier one in Asia, wants to put itself on the map with an iconic tower, or several. This creates plenty of strange shapes on the skyline — a firm of architects in Melbourne has just unveiled plans for an undulating 68-storey apartment and hotel block inspired by the fabric-clad dancers in a Beyoncé video.
每个全球一线城市以及亚洲许多二、三线城市都想拥有一幢或几幢标志性大楼。这使得城市天际线出现了大量奇奇怪怪的轮廓——墨尔本的一家建筑设计公司刚刚公布了一栋68层波浪形公寓和酒店大楼的设计方案，其灵感来自碧昂斯(Beyoncé)视频中穿着紧身衣的舞者。
Such expressions of architectural individuality have the paradoxical effect of making cities look more and more like each other. Once upon a time, Chicago and New York were skyscraper-villes, while European capitals such as Paris and London had muted streetscapes. Now, many are converging on what Rem Koolhaas, the avant-garde architect, dubbed “the generic city”.
如此表现建筑个性产生了矛盾的效果：使城市看起来越来越千篇一律。曾几何时，芝加哥与纽约是摩天大楼的聚集地，而欧洲国家首都（如巴黎和伦敦）的街貌看起来更加平缓。如今，许多城市在迈向先锋派建筑师雷姆•库哈斯(Rem Koolhaas)所称的“泛化城市”。
This worries some designers. Moshe Safdie, the Israeli-American architect who has designed towers in cities including Chongqing, says some skyscrapers are “objectified, branded ego trips” that are more like giant sculptures than buildings forming parts of a public space. In Asia, “hundreds of towers are being built but you do not get a city from it, just individual pieces”.
这让一些设计师感到担忧。在多个城市（包括重庆）设计过高楼的以色列裔美国建筑师萨夫迪(Moshe Safdie)说，一些摩天大楼是“物化的、追求个人虚荣的旅行”，它们更像是巨型雕塑，而非构成公共空间一部分的建筑物。在亚洲，“数以百计的摩天大楼正在建设中，但它们不会形成城市，而只是一栋一栋的高楼”。
The advantage is that the best new towers are superior to what came before — an era of second-rate modernism in which skyscrapers were designed by the large, anonymous architecture firms that still build most offices and infrastructure. The centres of many cities are stuffed with buildings designed mainly to hold bank trading floors.
如今的优势在于，最优秀的新摩天大楼胜过之前那个平庸现代主义时代的产物，那时的摩天大楼由不知名的大型建筑公司设计，这些公司仍在设计大多数办公楼和基础设施。许多城市的中心都挤满了主要设计用作银行交易部门的高楼。
The City of London’s skyline is sprouting unusual shapes, from Lord Rogers’ “Cheesegrater” Leadenhall Building to Mr Viñoly’s “Walkie Talkie” at 20 Fenchurch Street. But both beat the mundane blocks that dominate Canary Wharf and other financial hubs. The rapid expansion of global finance in the two decades up to 2008 created many boring monuments.
伦敦金融城的天际线正在涌现不规则的形状，从罗杰斯勋爵的被称为“奶酪刨”(Cheesegrater)的Leadenhall大楼，到维诺里的位于芬丘奇街(Fenchurch Street) 20号的“对讲机”(Walkie Talkie)大楼。但这两栋摩天大楼使占据金丝雀码头和其他金融中心的普通高楼相形见绌。2008年之前，全球金融业20年的快速扩张造就了许多乏味的建筑物。
One symbol of changing times is Two World Trade Center, Mr Ingels’ design for 21st Century Fox and News Corp’s headquarters. Lord Foster’s tower, topped by diamond-shaped panes, was designed with banks in mind. Mr Ingels’ replacement is a stack of cubes mirroring Tribeca’s streets while offering a smooth face to the memorial site.
时代变化的一个标志是英厄尔斯为21世纪福克斯(21st Century Fox)和新闻集团(News Corp)总部设计的世贸中心二号大楼(Two World Trade Center)。福斯特勋爵菱形屋顶的顶部设计是为银行设计的。英厄尔斯的替代方案是一堆可以反射翠贝卡街区（Tribeca，纽约市曼哈顿下城的一个街区——译者注）的立方体，同时为纪念遗址留下平滑的一面。
Media and technology companies — the city’s rising forces — are more imaginative clients than banks. They do not want a plain skyscraper but something smarter that they can show off. The pioneer of this trend in New York was Frank Gehry’s curvy IAC building, and Mr Ingels says such buildings “must accommodate diversity, so a single extruded form does not make the cut”.
这座城市正在崛起的力量——传媒和科技公司——是比银行更富有想象力的客户。它们想要的不是一座普通的摩天大楼，而是一座可以炫耀的、更智慧的大楼。在纽约，这种趋势的先驱是弗兰克•格里(Frank Gehry)设计的曲线形IAC大厦。英厄尔斯称，这样的建筑“必须包容多样性，因此单调的挤出形状是达不到要求的”。
Another set of demanding clients are high-end property developers, who can secure higher prices if an apartment block has been stamped by a “starchitect”. Mr Gehry and Mr Viñoly have designed such blocks in New York; while Herzog & de Meuron’s new Paris building, with its glass triangle echoing IM Pei’s Louvre pyramid, will hold office space and a hotel.
另一群高要求客户是高端房地产开发商。如果一幢公寓楼被贴上“明星建筑师”的标签，就能确保较高的定价。格里和维诺里已经在纽约设计了这样的楼群；而赫尔佐格-德梅隆建筑公司为巴黎设计的新大厦将包括办公空间和一家酒店，其玻璃三角形设计呼应了贝聿铭(IM Pei)设计的卢浮宫玻璃金字塔。
The proliferation of skyscrapers has its problems. One is that many are being built but only a small number by the most thoughtful architects. Many Asian and Middle Eastern cities are filling with what Mr Ingels calls “perfume bottle” designs — flamboyant towers intended to attract attention rather than to respond to the local setting.
摩天大楼的大量出现也带来问题。其一是，许多摩天大楼都在建设，但其中只有少数出自最有思想的建筑师之手。亚洲和中东的许多城市都布满了英厄尔斯所称的“香水瓶”设计——夸张的外形旨在吸引注意力，而不是适应周边环境。
Mr Koolhaas celebrated the notion of cities being “liberated from the captivity of identity”, but that looks better on paper than set in concrete. There used to be no difficulty in knowing whether you were in London or Paris, or which continent you were on, but many cities now resemble a mash-up between Hong Kong and Las Vegas.
库哈斯赞同将城市“从身份桎梏中解放出来”的理念，但将这一理念付诸实践的效果不怎么好。过去，很容易就能知道你身处伦敦还是巴黎，或者哪个大洲，但现在许多城市都像是香港与拉斯维加斯的混合体。
The second problem is the one identified by Mr Safdie: that towers are individual sculptures rather than buildings that form part of a streetscape. The best-loved urban constructions are often terraces and rows of houses not single buildings.
第二个问题是萨夫迪所指出的：摩天大楼成了个别的雕塑品，而非构成街景一部分的建筑物。最受欢迎的城市建筑往往是排屋和成排的房子，而非独栋的大楼。
This may be inevitable — attempts at central planning of cities in the 1960s and 1970s by razing streets and building towers mostly turned out to be a disaster. For better or worse, this is the era of individual patronage, of tenants commissioning their own fortresses.
这可能是不可避免的——上世纪60和70年代实行城区中央规划、推倒街道建造高楼的尝试，最终成为一场灾难。无论是好是坏，当今是一个注重个性的时代，房客委托建造自己的堡垒。
Yet the best architecture is often the quietest, taking what is there and knitting it into a public space — from the High Line park in New York to the restoration of King’s Cross station in London. You would not notice either from a distance, but they matter.
不过，最好的建筑往往是最不显眼的——从纽约的高线公园(High Line Park)到整修一新的伦敦国王十字车站，它们都无缝融入公共空间。从远处，你不会注意到它们，但它们很重要。