李观仪教材复习材料.doc

Unit Three TEXT I WALLS AND BARRIERS I. Paraphrase the parts underlined in the following: Of course, my father is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is 1unnerving; but I suspect that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money. In his generation money was thought of as a 2tangible commodity --- bullion, bank notes, coins --- that could be 3hefted, carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the 4custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred windows, and bronze doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would be safe inside. If a building’s design made it appear 5impregnable, the institution was necessarily 6sound, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architectural symbol 7dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money, rather than in any aesthetic theory. But that attitude toward money has of course changed. The banker no longer offers us a safe, he offers us a service --- a service in which the most valuable elements are 8dash and a creative flair for the invention of large numbers. The Manufacturers Trust is a great cubical cage of glass whose brilliantly lighted interior challenges even the brightness of a sunny day, while the door to the vault, 9far from being secluded and guarded, is set out as a window display. Just as the older bank 10asserted its invulnerability, this bank by its architecture boasts of its imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to say where architecture ends and 11human assertion begins. In fact, there is no such division; the two are one and the same. In the age of sociology and psychology, walls are not simply walls but physical symbols of the 12barriers in men’s minds. In a primitive society, for example, men pictured the world as large, fearsome, hostile, and beyond human control. Therefore they built heavy, walls of huge boulders, behind which they could