Capturing Parisians’ Imaginations
讓巴黎人眼睛一亮的建築
By Joseph Giovannini

PARIS – President, François Hollande described the building as a “cathedral of light” that was “a miracle of intelligence, creativity and technology.”
歐蘭德總統形容這棟建築是「光之教堂」，就是「才智、創意、科技的奇蹟」。

He was talking about the 11,700-square-meter, $135 million Vuitton Foundation, a private cultural center and contemporary-art museum designed by Mr. Gehry and inaugurated on October 21.
他說的是占地11,700平方公尺（譯註：約3,540坪）、斥資1.35億美元打造的路易威登藝術基金會，一座民間的文化中心和當代藝術館，由法蘭克蓋瑞設計，10月21日啟用。

Claude Parent, France’s 91-year-old éminence grise in architecture, said that when he first saw it, “I was seized by an emotion so strong that it seemed to come from something other than architecture.”
91歲的法國建築界大老克勞德．巴宏說他初見此建築時，「情緒澎湃到感動彷彿不單是來自建築。」

Paris is celebrating Mr. Gehry at the moment. Some critics have called the building in the Bois de Boulogne one of the most technologically sophisticated, artistically motivated buildings in an oeuvre that started with small wood-frame studios and houses in Southern California and is the subject of a retrospective at the Pompidou Center.
巴黎正在禮讚蓋瑞。有些評論家說，這棟位於布隆尼森林的建築在蓋瑞所有作品中，技術複雜性與藝術感均屬頂級。蓋瑞出道時在南加州蓋小木屋，刻在龐畢度中心辦作品回顧展。

At Vuitton, visitors encounter what looks like a Cubist sailboat, with glass sails and spinnakers rising above the tree line and billowing simultaneously fore, aft, port and starboard. The building appears to glide over a cascade of water lapping down a stepped embankment below its cantilevered prow. The two-story structure has 11 galleries, an auditorium and multilevel roof terraces for events and art installations.
路易威登基金會訪客看來像艘立體派畫家筆下的帆船，透明的主帆和前三角帆自林木線揚起，從船頭到船尾，左舷到右舷，猛烈翻騰。建築看似在一道流水潺潺的石階瀑布上滑行。兩層樓的建築共有11座畫廊、一間展演廳和多個露臺，可以辦活動和擺設裝置藝術。

The site is next to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a 19th-century children’s park and zoo. The architect had to build within the dimensions of a bowling alley that previously stood here; anything higher had to be glass.
基金會位在Jardin d’Acclimatation公園旁，19世紀是兒童樂園和動物園。原址是保齡球館，建築師必須在球館範圍內蓋屋，高出的部分得用玻璃。

Mr. Gehry said he needed the approval of only one client, Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.
蓋瑞表示他只需要一位客戶的同意，LVMH精品集團的董事長兼執行長貝納．阿諾。

“The guy knew what he wanted, and he wanted a building that would be different than anything else anybody had ever seen,” Mr. Gehry said.
「這位仁兄知道自己要的是甚麼，他要的是與眾不同，前所未見的建築，」蓋瑞說。

Mr. Gehry ignored France’s geometric traditions. “The clouds of glass respond to nature’s geometry, to the park’s English landscaping,” he said of the Bois de Boulogne. “Nature’s apparent disorder has its own order.”
蓋瑞不管法國建築強調幾何線條的傳統。「玻璃雲回應的是自然的幾何學，（布隆尼）森林的英倫景觀。大自然表面上混亂，卻是亂中有序。」

Mr. Gehry said he was “very moved by the park, which reminded me of Proust’s Paris.” He added: “I read him over and over again, and I realized it was a pretty emotional site for everybody.”
蓋瑞表示「被公園深深打動，想起普魯斯特年代的巴黎」。他又說：「我一再閱讀普魯斯特，發現公園會個讓每個人都情緒激動。」

He had two mandates: respecting the park and garden and satisfying the requirements for the galleries. “Once we had the big, basic premise that there was a solid piece for the galleries, which we started to call the icebergs, and then the glass sails for the garden, we started to work them independently,” Mr. Gehry said. “Merging the two would not work, because you couldn’t have curvy galleries, and you can’t hang paintings on glass.” The diaphanous sails, supported on an acrobatic armature of wood and steel, project outside the iceberg.
他有兩項任務：尊重既有的公園和花園，滿足畫廊的需求。「當我們有了畫廊所需的大面積場地，我們開始稱做冰峰，然後是公園的玻璃帆，我們開始分別作業。」蓋瑞說：「融合兩者行不通，因為畫廊不可能彎彎曲曲，畫作也不能掛在玻璃上。」透明玻璃帆由木材和鋼鐵的支架支撐，從冰峰伸出。

The glass structure takes its place in a long Parisian tradition dating from the 13th-century Gothic Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, with its tall walls of stained glass, and the 19th-century Grand Palais, an exhibition hall whose glass vaults echo the vast public spaces of Rome. The Foundation’s fragmented, multidirectional forms recall the Cubism of Braque and Picasso.
玻璃結構在巴黎有悠久的傳統，可追溯至13世紀建於西堤島的哥德式聖禮拜堂，具有鑲嵌彩色玻璃的高牆；以及建於19世紀的巴黎大皇宮，內中展覽廳的玻璃拱頂呼應羅馬袤廣的公共空間。基金會片斷、多方向的形式，讓人想起立體派畫家布拉克和畢卡索。

Visitors enter a tall hall from which angled staircases and meandering paths lead to the galleries and to a roofscape of outdoor terraces enclosed by the glass sails. Between the iceberg and the sailboat, accordion spaces expand and contract, alternately intimate and grand, in what Mr. Gehry called “a chaotic dance.”
訪客進入一座大廳後，有角度的階梯和蜿蜒路徑通往畫廊和玻璃帆包圍的露天展演空間。在冰峰和帆船之間，摺門開開關關，空間時而私密時而雄偉，蓋瑞稱為「混亂的舞蹈」。

Not all critics have been impressed. In The Observer, Rowan Moore criticized the sails as unnecessary.
並非所有評論家都欣賞這件作品。羅漢．摩爾投書英國「衛報」，批評玻璃帆是畫蛇添足。

In the Pompidou retrospective, models and original drawings show the evolution of Mr. Gehry’s ideas leading up to the Vuitton Foundation. Other shows, said Frédéric Migayrou, the deputy director of the Pompidou, “have portrayed Gehry’s buildings as an object, a shape.”
龐畢度中心的回顧展以模型和原始草圖，顯示到設計基金會為止蓋瑞構想的演變歷程。中心副主任費德烈．米蓋洛表示，其他展覽都是以物件、形體的方式呈現他的作品。

“I tried to do the reverse,” he said, “going through all the works to define the evolution of the language, the continuities, the idea of dynamic movement, how he opens form so that they interact with the city and provoke the movement of the body around the building.”
「我試圖反其道而行，」他說：「透過所有作品來定義建築語言的演化、連續性、動態活動的概念，他如何開展形式來和城市互動，激發觀者繞著建築看。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/arts/design/two-shows-for-frank-gehry-as-his-vuitton-foundation-opens.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.tmagazine.com/culture/20141104/t04paris/zh-hant/

2014-11-04聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報十二版右