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为迎接2012年伦敦奥运会，英国将斥资1910万英镑建造一座115米高的深红色塔形建筑，这座塔比纽约的自由女神像还要高出22米，将成为伦敦的新地标。这座高塔是由特纳奖得主阿•卡普尔设计的，塔的主体将为钢结构，建筑造型蜿蜒曲折，从远处看像是一个损毁了的过山车。目前，这座地标性建筑的名字还未最终确定，“斯特拉特福巨人”、“哈伯泡泡塔”以及“安赛乐米塔尔轨道”等均在候选名称之列。塔的建筑地点选在奥运会主体育场和水上运动中心之间，届时，登上塔顶的圆盘观光台，整个奥林匹克公园的景色将一览无遗。伦敦市长鲍里斯•约翰逊希望，即使在奥运会结束之后，这座建筑仍将会作为伦敦东部令人震撼的建筑为全世界的人们所熟知。
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Britian's biggest piece of public art: At 115 metres high, the steel tower will be taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York. |
More than 120 years after Gustave Eiffel built the steel lattice that came to symbolize Paris, London is taking on the City of Light with the Colossus of Stratford — at least, that is one of the names the capital’s mayor has in mind.
The Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell sees Anish Kapoor’s work as a way of making the site of the 2012 Games stand out. East London will have the largest and most ambitious artwork in the country: a startling red tower that looks like a mangled rollercoaster.
It is too early to tell what the world will call this £19.1 million, 115m-tall (377ft) feat of technological and industrial wizardry, but another of the mayor Boris Johnson’s favorite titles is The Hubble-Bubble.
Kapoor beat competition from the artist Antony Gormley and the architects Caruso St John to win the mayor’s contest to find yet another “iconic symbol” for the city and the Olympic Park. Detailed plans were revealed yesterday at the Greater London Assembly headquarters.
Officially the structure, which will be 22m taller than the Statue of Liberty and more than twice the height of Nelson’s Column, is called the ArcelorMittal Orbit. It is named after the steel company owned by Lakshmi Mittal, the richest man in Britain, who is paying most of the cost — and planting a giant advert in the Olympic site. However Mr Johnson immediately bombarded his new landmark with a fusillade of alternative names.
“Some may choose to think of it as the Colossus of Stratford,” he said. “Some eyes may detect a helter-skelter or a supersized mutant trombone. Some may even see the world’s biggest ever representation of ashisha pipe and call it The Hubble-Bubble. But I know that it is the ArcelorMittal Orbit. It represents the dynamism of a city coming out of recession and the embodiment of the cross-fertilization of cultures and styles that makes London the world capital of arts, the cultural and creative industries.”
Whatever it ends up being called, the Orbit is the latest and priciest example of a vogue for gargantuan public art commissions, begun by Gormley’s Angel of the North in 1998 and continuing now with Mark Wallinger’s planned 50m tall horse near the Eurostar terminal at Ebbsfleet in Kent. Mr Johnson said that £3.1 million of the cost would be borne by the Greater London Authority, with Mr Mittal picking up the rest. “I know very well that there will be people who say we are nuts, we are barmy in the depths of a recession to be building Britain’s biggest ever piece of public art,” he said.
However, although the Olympics area already had the stadium, the aquatics centre and a giant shopping mall, he and Ms Jowell had long felt that “we needed to give that site something extra, something to distinguish the East London skyline, something to arouse the curiosity and wonder of Londoners and visitors alike”. They needed money to make it possible, and steel, so Mr Johnson was overjoyed to find himself sharing a cloakroom with Mr Mittal at Davos in January 2009.
The meeting lasted 45 seconds. Mr Mittal said that Mr Johnson spoke for all of them but by the end of it they had a deal. The Mayor rebutted suggestions that the structure would be an improper incursion of corporate branding into public life, pointing out that Olympics rules meant it could not carry the company name during the Games.
Mr Kapoor said he wanted to take on the Eiffel Tower and the memory of the “bird’s nest stadium” from the last Olympics by trying to “rethink” the idea of a tower. Lifts and a walkway will enable 800 people an hour to get to the top, where there will be a restaurant and viewing platform.
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(Agencies)
Vocabulary:
helter-skelter: 螺旋滑梯
mutant trombone: 变形的长号
shisha pipe: 水烟壶，shisha 阿拉伯水烟
（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）
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