When, in 1960, still a student, I got a traveling fellowship to study housing in North America. We traveled the country. We saw public housing high-rise buildings in all major cities: New York, Philadelphia. Those who have no choice lived there. And then we traveled from suburb to suburb, and I came back thinking, we've got to reinvent the apartment building. There has to be another way of doing this. We can't sustain suburbs, so let's design a building which gives the qualities of a house to each unit.
1960 年我還是學生時, 拿到出國留學的獎學金, 研究北美的住宅建築。 我們遊遍美國, 看到所有大城市裡的公共住宅大樓: 像是紐約、費城。 那些人別無選擇,只能住在那裡。 之後我們參訪各個郊區, 回來後我想 我們應該重新創造公寓建築。 應該要有其它方式來蓋這些房子。 我們無法做到郊區般的住宅品質, 那就設計一座建築, 讓家家戶戶都能擁有 像一棟房屋般的品質。
Habitat would be all about gardens, contact with nature, streets instead of corridors. We prefabricated it so we would achieve economy, and there it is almost 50 years later. It's a very desirable place to live in. It's now a heritage building, but it did not proliferate.
「棲地」最重要的就是花園, 與自然和街道親近, 而非面對窄小迴廊。 為了節省經費,我們運用組合屋, 這個地方存在將近 50 年了, 還是個讓人嚮往入住的地區。 現在已經是老建築了, 但這種建築並沒有擴張出去。
In 1973, I made my first trip to China. It was the Cultural Revolution. We traveled the country, met with architects and planners. This is Beijing then, not a single high rise building in Beijing or Shanghai. Shenzhen didn't even exist as a city. There were hardly any cars. Thirty years later, this is Beijing today. This is Hong Kong. If you're wealthy, you live there, if you're poor, you live there, but high density it is, and it's not just Asia. São Paulo, you can travel in a helicopter 45 minutes seeing those high-rise buildings consume the 19th-century low-rise environment. And with it, comes congestion, and we lose mobility, and so on and so forth.
我在 1973 年首次造訪中國, 當時正值文化大革命時期。 我們走遍全國, 和一些建築師、規劃師見面。 這是當時的北京, 沒有一棟高樓大廈 存在北京或上海之中。 深圳甚至談不上是個城市, 那裡連車子都沒有。 30 年後, 這是現在的北京。 這是香港。 如果你很有錢,就會住在這, 如果你很窮,就會住在這, 但並非只有亞洲的環境如此密集。 聖保羅也是, 你可以花 45 分鐘在直升機上, 看那些高樓大廈吞噬 19 世紀矮房子的環境。 結果造成交通壅塞、 城市擁擠等問題。
So a few years ago, we decided to go back and rethink Habitat. Could we make it more affordable? Could we actually achieve this quality of life in the densities that are prevailing today? And we realized, it's basically about light, it's about sun, it's about nature, it's about fractalization. Can we open up the surface of the building so that it has more contact with the exterior?
因此幾年前, 我們決定回頭重新思考「棲地」。 我們能讓價格更平易近人嗎? 我們真能達到這樣的生活品質, 即使是在現今普遍稠密的環境嗎? 我們了解基本上和光源有關, 和太陽有關,和自然有關, 和碎形化有關。 我們能不能展開建築的表面, 讓它和外界有更多接觸?
We came up with a number of models: economy models, cheaper to build and more compact; membranes of housing where people could design their own house and create their own gardens. And then we decided to take New York as a test case, and we looked at Lower Manhattan. And we mapped all the building area in Manhattan. On the left is Manhattan today: blue for housing, red for office buildings, retail. On the right, we reconfigured it: the office buildings form the base, and then rising 75 stories above, are apartments. There's a street in the air on the 25th level, a community street. It's permeable. There are gardens and open spaces for the community, almost every unit with its own private garden, and community space all around. And most important, permeable, open. It does not form a wall or an obstruction in the city, and light permeates everywhere.
我們想出一些模型: 經濟實惠的模型, 建造的費用更低、更精巧; 大家可以設計自宅的外部, 打造自己的花園。 後來我們決定拿紐約做實驗案例, 研究曼哈頓下城。 我們畫出曼哈頓建築區的地圖。 左邊是現在的曼哈頓: 藍色是住宅,紅色是辦公大樓和商場。 右邊是我們重新配置的樣子: 辦公區做為底部, 向上延伸 75 層樓高, 做為公寓。 在 25 樓高的空中有條街, 是社區街道, 可以通行。 還有花園和開放空間 供社區使用, 幾乎每戶都有私家花園, 四周有社區空間環繞。 最重要、方便通行且開放的是, 城市沒有築起任何圍牆或障礙物, 而且陽光能灑在每個角落。
And in the last two or three years, we've actually been, for the first time, realizing the quality of life of Habitat in real-life projects across Asia. This in Qinhuangdao in China: middle-income housing, where there is a bylaw that every apartment must receive three hours of sunlight. That's measured in the winter solstice. And under construction in Singapore, again middle-income housing, gardens, community streets and parks and so on and so forth. And Colombo.
一直到最近兩三年, 我們才首次真的 實現「棲地」的良好生活品質, 透過遍及亞洲的實地計畫達成。 這是中國的秦皇島市: 中所得家戶的住宅, 規定每間公寓都必須能擁有 三小時的日照, 以冬至那天為基準測量。 這是在新加坡的施工現場, 同樣是中所得家戶的住宅、花園、 社區街道和公園…等等。 接下來是可倫坡。
And I want to touch on one more issue, which is the design of the public realm. A hundred years after we've begun building with tall buildings, we are yet to understand how the tall high-rise building becomes a building block in making a city, in creating the public realm. In Singapore, we had an opportunity: 10 million square feet, extremely high density. Taking the concept of outdoor and indoor, promenades and parks integrated with intense urban life. So they are outdoor spaces and indoor spaces, and you move from one to the other, and there is contact with nature, and most relevantly, at every level of the structure, public gardens and open space: on the roof of the podium, climbing up the towers, and finally on the roof, the sky park, two and a half acres, jogging paths, restaurants, and the world's longest swimming pool. And that's all I can tell you in five minutes.
我想再談一個議題, 是關於公共空間的設計。 從百年前 我們開始蓋高樓大廈至今, 我們還是不了解 高樓大廈要怎麼變成組合、堆疊式建築, 同時打造城市 和建立公共空間。 在新加坡,我們有了機會: 一千萬平方英尺,密度非常高。 以室外與室內的概念來看, 海濱步道和公園融入緊繃的都市生活。 那裡有室外和室內空間, 你可以在不同的空間移動, 還能親近自然, 最貼切的是每一層樓都有 公共花園和開放空間。 在墩座頂部, 攀上高塔, 最後抵達屋頂上的空中花園, 兩英畝半,有跑道、餐廳, 還有世界上最長的游泳池。 以上就是我在五分鐘內能分享的一切。 謝謝。
Thank you.
(掌聲)
(Applause)