在ABBS论坛上看见：美国《建筑实录》杂志（Architecture Record第10期）网站上10月11日最新出现的新闻：New Web Site Showcases China's "Bad Architecture"：www.badarchitecture.org，发现中粮广场作为长安街的代表也榜上有名，照片里格外丑！
October 11, 2004
Think of Beijing architecture these days, and you're likely to conjure up impressive images from the city's current and much publicized renovation scheme: Rem Koolhaas's planned CCTV tower; Paul Andreu's dome-shaped National Theater; even the famous Forbidden City, now undergoing at multimillion dollar overhaul. But in between these grand plans is a very different sort of design style—one that's best summed up in the name of a new website that showcases it: badarchitecture.org.
想想北京最近的建筑，一幅幅大量建设的画面可能立即清晰地出现在你脑海：库哈斯的CCTV大楼，安德鲁的穹顶状的国家大剧院，甚至在著名的故宫里，也投以巨资进行修整。但在这些重大项目之外，却是一大堆风格怪异的设计——有人便将其加以搜集，建立了新的网站来展示它们：badarchitecture.org
The site, a collaboration of four architecture aficionados in Beijing, skips the commentary and lets the pictures speak for themselves. There are photos of the garish office towers lining Beijing's main boulevard. A series of gaudy, Greek-inspired buildings from across the city. An artist's rendering of a planned structure that looks, frankly, "like a giant ball on top of a toaster oven," says Daniel Elsea, a RECORD contributor who co-founded the site with Jeremy Wingfield, Connor Wingfield, and Daniel Shupp.
The project is "not a critique, but an observational exercise" designed to highlight some of Beijing's tackiest facades, Elsea says. "China has a beautiful heritage—the nicest buildings are the ones that have been here for centuries. A lot of detail, craftsmanship, and elegance went into those buildings, but something happened to those ideas along the way."
Now, the Chinese capital houses a mishmash of architectural styles taken from all over the world—the best of intentions, with the worst results, Elsea says. "It seems a lot of people who create these buildings are copying an idea," he says. "They see a picture from a book or a movie, but they don't see the details. The result is a building that might look okay from a few blocks away, but up close you realize it's a Modern structure with Baroque light fixtures."
如今，中国的首都已经充斥着来自世界各个角落的风格，变得混乱不堪——最理想的意图，却导致最糟糕的结果。Elsea说道：“似乎创造这些（杂乱）建筑的人们一直在重复同一个思路。他们从书上或是电影上看到一个画面，却忽略了细节。因此便导致这样的结果，从几个街区以外看一栋建筑，似乎还过得去，但一旦接近它，你会发现这栋现代建筑上竟然装有巴洛克式的灯具！”
Since the site's official launch in mid-September, online traffic has risen to a steady 18,000 page views per week from fans eager to see what the next featured monstrosity will be. Not that there's any chance of running out of ideas: "We've only covered a tiny fraction of what's out there," Elsea says. "There's literally mile after mile of these buildings. And the rest of China is even worse."
自从九月中旬该网站建立以来，……Elsea说：“我们只是含盖了那里的一小部分状况，实际上这样的房子是一大片一大片地出现，而且在中国其它地方更加糟糕。”
Betsy Lowther
The New China: What's Lost in the Translation
新中国：在转型中失去了什么？
By Arrol Gellner （在苏州开业的美国建筑师）
Over the past two decades, the People's Republic of China has been transformed from an oppressed, poverty-stricken nation into a vibrant and increasingly democratic one. Yet changes of this speed and magnitude inevitably bring some casualties, and one of these is the millennia-old tradition of Chinese architecture. As Westernization takes hold here, China's unique architectural aesthetic is dissolving away into the melting pot of get-rich-quick mediocrity.
The first blow against traditional Chinese architecture was struck by the Colonial powers in the early 20th century. The Classical monuments of the British, French, and Americans shaped the face of coastal cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, and could not fail to make a deep impression on the Chinese psyche. The second blow came courtesy of the Communists, who sought a clean break from China's subjugated past, whether dynastic or colonial. Ironically, though, the most powerful and irrevocable damage yet has come from China's own scramble to Westernize. The Chinese have struck a Faustian bargain to trade in their agrarian culture for an industrialized one, just as the West did two centuries ago. And in China, as in the West, there will be no turning back.
The effects of this decision are already obvious. The tranquil rice paddies with their scattering of old-style "black-roof houses" are rapidly being turned under to accommodate the mushrooming growth of China's urban centers. In the first five months of 2000, for example, some 296 million square feet of new housing had been sold--a staggering 42 percent increase from the same period in 1999. Most of this new construction took the form of numbing ranks of apartment blocks goose-stepping across what was once part of China's preciously small percentage of arable land.
Little of China's ancient design heritage is to be found in these new buildings. The delicate ornament, elegant expression of structure, and harmony with the landscape that have characterized Chinese architecture for tens of centuries have been all but abandoned for the more progressive-seeming sheen of tile, metal and glass. High-rise buildings in Suzhou look little different from those anywhere in the West--aside from their markedly inferior construction quality--and the same can be said for apartments, public buildings and engineering works.
中国古代的设计遗产已经在新建筑中所剩无几了。中国传统建筑那些延续数百年的特征——精巧的装饰，雅致的结构，与自然和谐共存，为了发展几乎全部被抛弃掉了，被闪闪发亮的瓷砖、金属、玻璃所取代。除了明显粗糙的建设质量，苏州的高层建筑与任何一个西方国家的几乎没什么区别。而公寓、公共建筑、机械工厂，也都是如此地相似。
Chinese architects happily combine Modernist details with classical ones; for example, the stairwell in my apartment building has a sleek stainless steel pipe rail that segues straight into a spindled Colonial balustrade. Light fixtures resembling bizarre collisions of Baroque ornament routinely hang above Modernist tables of chrome and glass, and vice versa. What's missing in all this slightly twisted Westernesque design is an acknowledgement of China's own architectural traditions--of its special fitness and meaning to this vast and ancient nation. Perhaps in time the Chinese will find a new appreciation of their own architectural heritage. Perhaps they'll recognize that not all change is good, and that some things ought to last millennia.
中国建筑师愉快地将现代主义的细部与古典主义结合在一起。比如说：……
在这些胡乱绞错在一起的西方风格设计中，中国所失去的正是对他们自己的建筑传统的承认——在这块辽阔和古老的国土上创造恰如其分且富有内涵的建筑特征。或许当中国人能重新准确评价自己的建筑遗产的时候，或许他们开始认识到不是所有的变化都是好东西的时候，有些东西便可以千年地延续下去。
China - From Before Mao to Now
这一篇是建筑实录杂志主编Robert Ivy写的一篇最新评论，发表于10月12日，倒是很客观地介绍中国的建筑状况（包括上海青浦区、新天地，北京后海、大山子）。就不翻译了。第一段文字异常优美。节选第一段和最后一段。
October 12, 2004
Along the rivers and canals that line China's old cities, the world floats away on a haze of incense and foggy air. Around a bend, new China beckons. Energy lies in the interstices. Nowhere is this energetic charge more apparent than towns where one of the world's most ancient civilizations encounters the Twenty-First Century, with architecture serving as proving ground. Two contemporary sites prove the point.
略去中间
At night, architects gather for presentations by their peers, and visitors move between galleries, bars, and restaurants. Toursits have discovered the district, and buses are beginning to lumber down the streets with New Yorkers and Germans, eager to find the newest new thing. While the delights of this ferment may seem obvious, Dashanzi's future has not been assured, as economic and social forces impinge on the valuable real estate. Visit it today, to see an authentic crystallization of people and a moment of tangible change. As certainly as this moment arcs through the architectural space, it will burn and discharge. The power is on in China, now.
Notes from Robert Ivy, FAIA, Editor-in-chief
评论 (1)
呵呵，其实推荐你来我们杂志做地产记者或者编辑。
很真诚那种哦
由 尹春洋 | November 15, 2004 12:55 PM