2019年经济学人 著名华裔建筑大师贝聿铭(1)（在线收听）

When in 1984 I.M.Pei, then the most sought-after architect in America, presented his plans for a 70-foot glass pyramid in the 18th-century courtyard of the Louvre, the general reaction was outrage. This was an atrocity; it was "an annex to Disneyland". Because Mr Pei was Chinese-American, a foreigner twice over, he clearly had no understanding of the Louvre, or Paris, or France.

1984年，贝聿铭，当时美国最受欢迎的建筑设计师，计划在18世纪的卢浮宫庭院里建造一座70英尺高的玻璃金字塔，人们普遍的反应是愤怒。这是一场暴行；这是“迪士尼乐园的附属建筑”。因为贝聿铭是华裔美国人，这是两个外国人的身份。很明显，他对卢浮宫、巴黎或法国一无所知。

These remarks did not annoy him. As a man of courtesy and cultivation, with quick enthusiasms and wide, wide smiles, he took them in his stride. But he was surprised. He had been asked to design a new entrance for the museum and, instead of adding on some utilitarian concrete block, had created a great welcoming space: put a swirling staircase underground and capped it with a glow of transparency and light that did not touch, let alone hurt, the old ornamented facades. In short, he had taken his usual care. He had also expressed, once again, his two great passions in architecture.

这些评论没有激怒他。作为一个有礼貌和教养的人，他热情高涨，笑容灿烂，从容地接受了他们。但是贝聿铭很惊讶。他受邀为卢浮宫设计一个新的入口，他没有添加一些实用的混凝土块，而是创造了一个伟大的欢迎空间：他设计了一个地下的旋转的楼梯，用透明的灯光覆盖它，这种设计没有触及，更不用说伤害古老的装饰立面。简言之，他像往常一样小心翼翼。而且，他也再一次表达了他对建筑的两大热情。

The first, as befitted a true modernist trained at MIT and Harvard, was for simple geometric forms, triangle, circle andsquare. On these he based all his buildings, which included the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, the KennedyLibrary in Boston, the Museum of Art at Cornell, the Bank of ChinaTower in Hong Kong and the Museum of Islamic Art in Dubai. Slopes, as in rhomboids and trapezoids, delighted him; pyramids pleased him for their perfect stability. And when he dreamed of one in the Louvre—for he always did the dreaming, while associates did the drawing—it fitted exactly, to his mind, with the love of geometry and rationality that he saw everywhere in Paris.

第一，他是接受过麻省理工学院和哈佛大学教育的真正的现代主义者，他喜欢简单的几何形状，三角形，圆形和正方形。他所有的建筑都基于这些几何形状，包括华盛顿国家美术馆的东楼，波士顿的肯尼迪图书馆，康奈尔大学的艺术博物馆、香港的中银大厦和迪拜的伊斯兰艺术博物馆。斜坡，就像菱形和梯形一样，使他高兴；金字塔因其完美的稳定性而使他开心。贝聿铭梦想着在卢浮宫里建造一个金字塔——因为他总是在做梦，而他的伙伴们则画画——这与他在巴黎随处可见的对几何学和理性的热爱完全吻合。