城市天際線 社會病的心電圖

The skyline used to belong to God. The spires and domes which punctured the horizons rose upwards in acknowledgment of a higher purpose.

天際線曾經屬於上帝。穿透地平線的尖頂和穹頂向上延伸以宣示更爲崇高的目的。

Then came the brick chimneys of industry and their plumes of sMoke. Then the monuments of civic identity — the Statue of Liberty, Nelson’s Column, the Eiffel Tower as the power shifted to the cities grown wealthy. These were in turn followed by the skyscrapers as the real influence moved to the corporations and banks which built them. The skyline has always revealed who owns the city, where the real power lies and to whom — or what — the citizens look up.

隨後是磚砌的工業煙囪以及它們排放的滾滾濃煙。隨着影響力轉移到變得富裕起來的城市手中，穿透天際線的隨後變成了象徵城市身份的紀念性建築——自由女神像、納爾遜紀念柱以及埃菲爾鐵塔。接下來是摩天大樓，因爲實際影響力轉移到建造摩天大樓的企業和銀行手中。天際線總是揭示出誰擁有這座城市，真正的權力在哪裏以及居民仰望的是什麼人或者什麼東西。

That is why the most recent shift in our skylines demands to be noticed. Anyone visiting New York and looking up will see the city’s skyline radically changing. A new typology has emerged — the skinnyscraper — the ultra-slender, uber-extruded tower whose spiritual home is the edge of Central Park.

這就是我們的天際線的最近轉變有必要引起注意的原因所在。任何造訪紐約並擡頭仰望的人都會看到該城市天際線的劇烈變化。新的分類已經出現——“摩天瘦樓”，即超纖瘦的摩天大樓，其精神家園位於中央公園(Central Park)的邊緣。

These attenuated fingers casting their anorexic shadows on to the grass are beginning to exert a real impact on Manhattan’s horizon. Rafael Viñoly’s 96-storey 432 Park Avenue kicked the new era off. Shop Architects’ tapering, astonishingly slender 111 W57th is providing the next instalment. The latter will rise to above the height of the Empire State Building. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA tower and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill’s Nordstrom Tower are to come. Both will dominate Manhattan’s new horizon.

這些向草坪投下瘦長陰影的纖細高樓開始對曼哈頓的地平線產生真實的影響。拉菲爾•維諾里(Rafael Viñoly)設計的位於派克大街(Park Avenue) 432號的96層公寓大樓開啓了這個新時代。SHoP建築事務所(SHoP Architects)設計的位於西57街(W57th) 111號的超纖廋大樓揭開了下一個篇章。後者的高度將超過帝國大廈(Empire State Building)。讓•努韋爾(Jean Nouvel)設計的MoMA以及阿德里安史密斯和戈登吉爾建築事務所(Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill)設計的諾德斯特姆大廈(Nordstrom Tower)即將完工。這兩幢大樓都將主宰曼哈頓新的地平線。

What is so striking about this new kind of skyscraper is its use — these are condo towers, often with only a single apartment to each floor and 360 degree views of the city. Perhaps that is why the shock has been so visceral — they appear to represent a de facto privatisation of the skyline.

這種新的摩天大樓如此引人矚目的原因在於其用途，這些是產權公寓(condo)大樓，通常每層只有一套公寓，可以360度俯瞰整座城市。或許這正是這種衝擊如此觸動人心的原因所在——這些大樓似乎代表着天際線在事實上被私有化了。

The scale is not quite the same in London but here, too, the skyline is being punctuated by dozens of apartment towers. You could argue that in London, even though the towers are shorter, the effect is yet more pronounced. This is still low-rise city and each tower exerts a powerful impact.

倫敦的情況沒有這麼嚴重，但這裏的數十幢公寓大樓也是高聳入雲。你可以辯稱，在倫敦，即便這些公寓樓稍低一些，但其影響更爲顯著。這是一座仍有些低矮的城市，而每座大樓都有巨大的影響。

The Shard and the Walkie Talkie now poke their way into the city’s most surprising views. The Shard’s developer, Irvine Sellar, recently went back to the drawing board with plans by the same architect, Renzo Piano, for another super-tall tower.

“碎片大廈”(Shard)和“對講機”(Walkie Talkie)現在正成爲這座城市最令人驚奇的景觀。開發Shard的歐文•塞勒(Irvine Sellar)最近在修改同一建築師倫佐•皮亞諾(Renzo Piano)的另一個摩天大樓的相關計劃。

Dubbed the “Paddington Pole” this lanky cylinder would have radically changed the west London skyline — and it is a testament to the wealth and power in the west of the city that the plans are being revised when the Shard, in less-well-off Southwark, seemed to glide through.

這座被稱爲“帕丁頓杆(Paddington Pole)”的細長圓柱形大樓將極大地改變倫敦西部的天際線。位於不那麼富裕的南華克區(Southwark)的Shard似乎悄無聲息地就建起來了，而Paddington Pole的相關計劃因遭到反對正在修改之中，這是對倫敦西部財富和權力的證明。

The furore over the Piano project in Paddington seemed to indicate a turning point in London just as the concern over the shadows being cast over Central Park did in New York. London could face a future of over 200 new towers of 20 storeys or more appearing on its skyline over the next few years, while even New York’s resolutely high-rise profile is being dominated by the new superskinny, super-tall skyscrapers.

圍繞皮亞諾的Paddington項目的羣情激奮似乎表明倫敦將出現轉折點，就像此前人們對紐約摩天大樓遮擋中央公園陽光的擔憂表明紐約出現轉折點一樣。倫敦今後幾年可能出現逾200幢20層甚至更高的新大樓，同時，就連紐約已經絕對算是非常高的天際線，也正在被超纖瘦、超高的新摩天大樓主導。

Fifty years ago in London the buildings that were poking their heads above the horizon tended to be either the architecture of the welfare state — social housing towers, government offices or even hospitals. The Brutalist concrete Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital tower was the tallest in south London in the 70s. Now its neighbour the Shard has made it almost invisible.

50年前，在倫敦，地平線上明顯高於其他建築物的往往是福利政府的建築——社會保障住房、政府辦公樓甚至是醫院。野獸派建築風格的蓋伊和聖托馬斯醫院(Guys & St Thomas’s Hospital)在上世紀70年代是倫敦南部最高的建築物。現在有了鄰居Shard，人們幾乎都看不到這座大樓了。

There were occasional spectacular office blocks like Centre Point, now itself being converted to residential, and hotels but even the most striking structures — take the Post Office Tower — were public buildings.

偶爾也會有顯眼的寫字樓和酒店，比如中心點寫字樓（Centre Point，現在改爲了住宅樓），但以前最引人注目的建築物也是公共建築，比如郵電大樓(Post Office Tower)。

In New York the skyline had been dominated by the corporations which fed the economic boom time of the postwar years: Lever House, the Seagram Building, the Pan Am Building, the AT&T Tower. These were works by the greatest architects of the age built to express the city’s economy as the centre of capital.

在紐約，天際線一直由催生了戰後經濟繁榮期的企業主導：利華大廈(Lever House)、西格拉姆大廈(Seagram Building)、泛美大樓(Pan Am Building)以及美國電話電報公司大廈(AT&T Tower)。這些都是當時最偉大的建築師的作品，以表明該城市經濟作爲資本中心的地位。

In both cities on either side of the Atlantic, the skyline could also be read as a graph of social and economic concerns, an ECG illustrating the pulse of the streets below.

在大西洋兩岸的這兩座城市裏，天際線也可解讀爲顯示社會和經濟問題的圖表，一張顯示下面街道脈動的心電圖。

Now the pattern has been disrupted. Some of the towers are undeniably powerful buildings, well-designed, often quite elegant but they are also huge. The towers of today express little of the spirit of the cities above which they loom; rather they act as extruded billboards for real estate as an asset class.

現在這種模式已被打破。其中一些大樓無疑功能強大、設計精良、往往相當雅緻，但它們也非常大。如今的大樓幾乎絲毫不代表所在城市的精神；在某種程度上來說，它們就是房地產這一資產類別直插天際的廣告牌。

The resentment against these new buildings — even when they might be fine architecture — is that they too perfectly capture the pricing out of ordinary citizens from the centres of their respective cities. But perhaps worse than that, the sale of the bulk of these hyper-luxurious high-rise condos to foreign investors, buy-to-leavers and absentee landlords expresses the globalisation of property, the effects of which have been much like the globalisation of industry — the export of profits and the loss of benefits for the city.

人們對這些新大樓（即便在它們是漂亮的建築物的時候）的不滿在於，它們太精準地反映出這一事實：高昂的房價將普通人趕出他們所在城市的中心區域。但或許更糟糕的是，這些超豪華的高層產權公寓大部分被賣給外國投資者、炒房客以及常年不在這裏居住的業主，這表明了房地產的全球化，它的影響在很大程度上與工業全球化相似——利潤被輸出，城市的利益受到損害。

New York, at least, with its high property taxes, manages to capture some of the value back for the city but London, fails in even this most basic respect.

紐約出臺了高昂的房地產稅，至少成功地爲自己奪回了一些價值，但倫敦就連這點最基本的也沒有做到。

Peter Rees, one-time chief planner for the City of London, called these properties “safe-deposit boxes in the sky”, an eloquent encapsulation of the alienation of this real estate from the real city that lies below it.

曾擔任倫敦金融城首席規劃官的彼得•李斯(Peter Rees)將這些房地產稱爲“天空裏的保管箱”，精闢地概括了這種房地產與下方真實城市之間的隔閡。

If this new generation of towers is to be integrated into the city, both physically and psychologically to become part of the streets which they cast in shadow, this problem will need to be addressed.

要想讓這新一代高樓融入所處城市，無論從物理上還是心理上都成爲被它們陰影籠罩的街道的一部分，那麼就需要應對這個問題。

If it is not, the consequence will be a new architecturally-imposed class system and a picture of inequality inscribed in the skyline in the most graphic way imaginable.

如果不應對這個問題，後果將是一種新的由建築造成的階級體系，以可以想象得到的最生動的手法在天際線上刻畫出不平等的畫面。

It will leave citizens feeling like tourists in their own cities, gawping up at the homes of the wealthy blacking out the sky where once there was sun.

這將讓市民覺得他們是自己城市裏的遊客，呆呆地仰望高高聳立、遮天蔽日的富人居所。