Olympic Village/ Good intentions

伦敦奥运村是与非

Good intentions

作者：英国《金融时报》 埃德温•希思科特

The last time London hosted the Olympics, in 1948, the athletes were housed in former military hospitals and prisoner-of-war camps, student halls and a bunch of tents in Richmond Park. This year the 17,000 athletes will find themselves in a fortified city. London’s huge Olympic Village is grossly misnamed. This is a chunk of serious city poking its head and shoulders above the low-lying brick terraces of east London and it will be the most significant element in the Games’ legacy.	伦敦上一次举办奥运会是在1948年，当时运动员入住的是以前的军队医院、战俘营、学生公寓以 及在里士满公园(Richmond Park)临时搭建的帐篷。今年的奥运会，17000名运动员届时看到的是一座戒备森严的城市。伦敦规模宏大的奥运村(Olympic Village)显得“不伦不类”。异常庄重的成片新建城区在伦敦东区低矮的平顶砖房面前，显得鹤立鸡群，将是奥运会留给伦敦市最有意义的一笔遗产。
This is housing on the scale and density that architects and planners have been demanding for decades: a single developer ensuring a coherent, intelligent and compact urbanity. It is the kind of unified development that has proved impossible since the end of the big postwar municipal building programmes – programmes whose widespread social failure has tainted the reputation of large-scale urban intervention ever since.	建筑师与规划师几十年来孜孜以求的就是这样的在建规模与密度：一次性开发以确保营造出紧凑、连贯以及智能型的都市风格。从战后伦敦大规模住房建设计划结束后，统一规划一再证明行不通——自此，住建计划接连受挫导致国民心灰意冷，也就使大规模的城市改造成为一句空话。
The original masterplan by Fletcher Priest, Arup and landscape designers West 8 for developer Lend Lease attempted to imbue the place with the scale and feel of expensive London districts – very dense but very classy. In this it has failed completely. Instead the result resembles a tranche transplanted from a Spanish or Swedish suburb, a piece of impeccably modern townscape with solid blocks, quality public space and facilities, and generous landscaping. It has a very fine school, designed (by architects AHMM) around a central drum in a cheery retro-modernist style. It has shops, streets, green spaces and a town centre. Unfortunately, though, that centre is isolated in the big ugly box of Westfield, Europe’s largest urban shopping centre.	原先的宏伟蓝图是由弗莱彻•普里斯特(Fletcher Priest)、奥雅纳(Arup)以及园林设计事物所West 8为地产商联盛集团(Lend Lease)所设计，试图把伦敦市高档区划的规模与情调（稠密但又异常别致）复制至东区，但此举彻底失败了。相反，最终的结果却似部分移植了西班牙及瑞典 的郊区——结实耐用的房屋、颇具品味的公共区域与设施以及耗资不菲的景区美化构筑的是一幅无可挑剔的现代城镇图景。由AHMM建筑事物所设计、用反现代主 义的欢快风格围绕正中央的圆柱子的，是一所非常棒的学校，此外还规划了商场、街道、绿地以及市镇中心。然而不幸的是，整个中心区域被隔绝于大而丑的盒子式 西田购物中心(Westfield)中，西田是欧洲最大的都市购物中心。
That removal of commercial street life might cause this to become an Alphaville, with the appearance but not the vitality of genuine urbanity. It’s difficult to judge while it’s still under construction, and while it’s still in Olympics rather than “legacy” mode. But the tall, beige buildings seem to be creating deep beige canyons, and even with the balconies, courtyards and a smattering of shops and planting, it is difficult to see this as an integrated and buzzing city quarter.	剔除掉商业街的韵味或许会让整个区域成为一座阿尔法城(Alphaville)——徒有其表， 却无真正的都市活力。如今奥运村还正在建，今年还是奥运年（还未变成“遗产”传下去），所以很难判断最终情况会是如何。但这些高高的米色建筑却似造出了米 黄色的深峡谷，即便建有阳台、庭院以及零星商店与植被，仍然很难把它视为功能齐全的繁华都市区。
Despite these reservations there are many things to cheer. One of the few good arguments for hosting the Olympics at all was that a development of this scale achieved at this speed – and with coherence – is impossible without the impetus of the big deadline. The design guidelines applied to things like the ratios of windows to wall, balconies to give all apartments access to outside space, a material palette of cast concrete panels that eschews whacky colours or nasty cladding. This, with the commissioning of a range of relatively young (although also relatively safe) architects, has created an ensemble of carefully articulated buildings. Some inhabit the dull end of the commercial spectrum, others look serious and interesting.	虽说有如此多的异议，但奥运村很多东西还是让人赏心悦目。伦敦举办奥运会很少引发争议的是：若 没有最后期限催促的话，如此大规模的城市基建不可能以这么快的速度一气呵成。窗户与墙的比例、全部公寓房的阳台须便于眺望、现浇混凝土板的材质板不能使用 怪诞颜色与让人不齿的装修均为必须遵循的设计指导方针。通过委任诸多相对年轻（虽说相对来说也较为保险）的建筑师，打造出整体上环环相扣的楼宇群。有些颇 似单调乏味的商务建筑，有些建筑则显得既庄重而又妙趣横生。
The most striking building is by one of London’s under-praised talents, Niall McLaughlin. He sheathes his block in casts of the Elgin marbles, made by electronically scanning the real marbles at the British Museum. The panels run around the whole height of the building, their shallow relief passing in and out of sharp shadow and creating a feeling of movement and depth. Simple balconies, with bands of concrete indicating floor and ceiling levels, create a particular modernist aesthetic – a bit reminiscent of Rome c1935, a comparison that will always raise the problematic associations of Fascist architecture.	最标新立异的一幢建筑是由伦敦最低调的设计师尼亚尔•麦克洛宁(Niall McLaughlin)设计。通过电子扫描大英博物馆(British Museum)的实物大理石，他用仿制埃尔金大理石(Elgin marbles)来装修外墙。一块块大理石绕整幢大楼而贴，浅浮雕则游走于轮廓之间，营造出某种动感与深度。设计简单的阳台（从钢筋混凝土可以辨出每一楼 层）塑造出一种特别现代的审美情调——依稀让人想起1935年时的罗马城，这种对比总是会让人回想起（往往会招惹麻烦）当时法西斯统治时期的建筑风格。
Regardless of these echoes, this is a powerful and beautiful building that poetically evokes the ancient Greek origins of the Games, as well as the controversial London location of the Elgin marbles; it is a building intelligently located in time, event and place.	不管外界的反应如何，这幢雄伟美观的大楼除了引发世人对大英博物馆把源于希腊的埃尔金大理石盗为己有的争论外，还诗意地唤起世人对起源于古希腊的奥运会的美好回忆；况且建此大楼适逢其时、其事于其地。
There are 2,818 flats built so far, with another 2,000 to come. Eric Parry’s central-European-inflected block is solid and urbane. Its bright abstract balcony fronts introduce a rare flash of colour – they were painted by Parry himself after a budget cut precluded any commissioned art. The building’s cutaway corner and chunky mass recalls the solid urban blocks of Barcelona. Other notable buildings in the village include DSDHA’s sharp 14-storey block with its strikingly angular balconies, CF Møller’s solidly Scandinavian composition and dRMM’s elegant terrace of three-storey houses.	目前已建公寓2818套，未来还将建2000套。埃里克•帕里(Eric Parry)设计的中欧风格的公寓楼结实而又雅致。给颜色亮丽、风格抽象的前阳台惊鸿一抹极为罕见的颜色——由于预算削减导致无钱请人代工，所以只好由帕 里自己动手刷。这幢大楼的圆角式拐角与厚实造型让人想起巴塞罗那城里结实耐用的公寓楼。奥运村中其它引人注目的楼宇包括DSDHA建筑事务所设计的14层 漂亮公寓楼（其阳台棱角分明）、CF Møller事务所设计的纯粹北欧风格的楼宇以及dRMM事务所设计的别致三层平顶楼。
The model imposed on the architects is the perimeter block: apartments and houses wrapped around a central green courtyard. That the blocks are arranged in a grid sliced through by diagonals reinforces their European quality. Their scale negotiates the chasm between the hideous burgeoning commercial towers of east London, which rise out of the raggedly redeveloped post-industrial landscape, and the dense rows of Victorian terraces that give the surrounding areas their neighbourhood character.	设计街坊式建筑(perimeter block)是政府的硬性要求：公寓与住宅按对角线分割的格子形状排列、紧绕中央绿地而建，以强化其欧式建筑风格。这样规模的街坊式建筑正好填补了伦敦东 区商厦的迅猛发展与一排排维多利亚风格的平顶房所造成的布局隔阂，这些商厦崛起于破烂不堪的后工业时代重建区，而维多利亚风格的平顶房则让周围的区域就象 居民区。
If the legacy of the Olympic Village is to be compared to that of other big events, however, there is good and bad news. The public infrastructures left over from the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Albertopolis, the area containing South Kensington’s museums, the Albert Hall and Imperial College) and, a century later, the Festival of Britain (the Festival Hall and, ultimately, the architecturally adventurous South Bank complex) make the civic legacy look weak. A more accurate comparison might be with White City, built for the 1908 Olympics, an area that remains a hopeless mess (not helped by the city’s other massive Westfield shopping centre).	但是，若把举办奥运村的遗产与其它大型活动的遗产相比较的话，则是好消息与坏消息并举。 1851年举办大英博览会（Great Exhibition，即囊括南肯辛顿博物馆(South Kensington’s museums)、阿尔伯特音乐厅（the Albert Hall）、帝国理工学院(Imperial College)等区域的阿尔伯特城(Albertopolis)）以及一个世纪后举办的英国艺术节（Festival of Britain，留存了皇家节日音乐厅(the Festival Hall)以及最终建筑风格较为激进的南岸区建筑群(South Bank complex)）遗留下来的公共设施让奥运会留给伦敦市民的这些遗产显得微不足道。或许与举办1908年奥运会而兴建的白城(White City)相比更为合适，这个区域至今仍是毫无起色、乱七八糟（大型超市西田并未在此开分店）。
The Olympic Village was bought last year by Qatari Diar, the Qatari sovereign-wealth fund’s property arm with developer Delancey, for £557m. This has left the taxpayer with a bill for £275m, a huge public subsidy for a private estate. This is a place of good intentions but it is one that encapsulates the contemporary trend for the privatising of profit and the socialising of loss.	奥运村项目去年由卡塔尔主权财富基金旗下的地亚尔房地产公司(Qatari Diar)与开发商德兰西(Delancey)以5.57亿英镑的价格共同竞得。此举让英国的纳税人多支付2.75亿英镑，用巨大的公共补贴金补助民营房 企。奥运村项目的出发点都是好的，但又集中体现了当前的社会趋势——利润私人化与损失社会化。
In that, it is as perfect a snapshot of a moment as was the self-improving South Kensington. Perhaps the Olympic Village will retain its current feel of a high-security gated enclave, perhaps it will grow into a piece of real London, or perhaps its blocky grid will prove successful and begin to inform the streets around it. The cliché has it that London is a collection of villages. This is entirely wrong: London is a city of districts, big, sprawling quarters with poorly differentiated edges and centres that are nevertheless each radically distinct. Perhaps, then, this new bulky non-village fits right in.	因为，正如不断自我发展的南肯辛顿反映了当时英国社会的发展状况，奥运村极好地映射了当前时 代。也许奥运村仍会给人以戒备森严的感觉，也许它会在精气神方面渐渐融入伦敦城、成为其真正的组成部分，也许其网格块状布局的建筑风格会最终大行其道，并 影响周围的大街小巷。老说伦敦是城中村云集之地。伦敦城发展成为由各个行政区与中心区组成的城市，行政区里的居民区摊大饼式地向四周发展，边缘地区呈低分 化状态，而各个中心区的风格迥异、各具特色，伦敦这么发展是完全错误的。也许这座大面积、横空出世的非村落（奥运村）恰好提供了一个过渡。
	译者：常和