博士英语第二学期上课材料.docVIP

DC-29-41 Architecture and Environment (建筑与环境) The skyscraper is as American as jazz . It is this country’s greatest and most characteristic contribution to the city , to whose skyline it lends rhythm and romance .（摩天大楼和爵士音乐一样堪称美国的特征。是美国对城市最大和最有特色的贡献，给城市的天际线增添了节奏和浪漫情调。） Like jazz , skyscraper architecture is a popular art 。（象爵士乐一样，摩天大楼的建筑是一种广受欢迎的艺术）During its golden age , in the 1920s and 1930s ,the skyscraper became a popular symbol of our national character :a soaring , upward –aspiring image as powerful as a moon rocket .（在摩天大楼的黄金时代，二十世纪二十年代和三十年代，摩天大楼成了人所共知的我们国民性格的象征：它直冲云霄、向上进取的形象包含着巨大的力量犹如奔月的火箭） Now , some seventy years after it reached its high point with the generation of the Chryler and Empire State buildings in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago and a hundred years after the invention of the steel skeleton that made it possible , the skyscraper is undergoing a reassessment .（今天，作为摩天大楼发展巅峰的标志，纽约的克来斯勒大厦和帝国大厦以及芝加哥的西尔斯大厦问世已经七十余年，使摩天大楼工程得以实施的钢筋构架的发明至今也有一百年。在这个世纪回眸中，摩天大楼正接受重新评价。） In the late 1960’s many people in North America turned their attention to environmental problems,and new steel-and -glass –skyscaperswere widely criticized.Ecologists pointed out a cluster of buildings in a city often overburndens public transportation and parking lot capacities .（二十世纪六十年代后期，北美的许多人开始关注环境问题，钢和玻璃结构的新摩天大楼遭到广泛的批评。生态学家指出城市的高层建筑群常使公共交通和停车场超负荷运作。） Skyscrapers are also lavish consumers , and wasters , of electric power. In one recent year, the addition of 17million square feet of skyscrapers office space in New York City raised the peak daily demand for electricity by 120,000kilowatts –enough to supply the entire city of Albany , New York , for a day .（摩天大楼造成了电力的滥用和浪费。最近有一年，纽约市新增加摩天大楼的办公室面积一千七百万平方英尺，使每天高峰用电量猛增十二万千瓦，足够为纽约州的阿尔巴尼市整座城市供电一天） Glass-walled skyscrapers can be especially wasteful . The heat loss (or gain )through a wall of half –inch plate glass is often ten times more than that through a typical masonry wall filled with insulation board . （玻璃幕墙式的摩天大楼造成的浪费尤其