好英语网坚守希望的波哥大
Bogotá, Colombia
波哥大，哥伦比亚
WHITE and modern in a neighborhood of mud and brick, the Jardín el Porvenir kindergarten occupies half a dozen two-story concrete-and-glass pods scattered like children’s blocks on an oval campus here. A metal fence shaped like a bamboo forest encloses the school, which borders a basketball court and plaza where people gather and teenagers play soccer. From inside the school, children look out on the neighborhood. From the outside, the kindergarten is a landmark and social magnet for a corner of a poor, sprawling district, Bosa, southwest of this city’s center.
在泥巴与砖头砌成的街区里，白色而摩登的甲丁·艾尔·波维尼尔(Jardin el Pronevir)幼儿园格外耀眼。这里是孩子们的街区，六栋两层楼高的混凝土玻璃建筑顽皮地散布在椭圆的园址上，围合的金属篱笆呈竹林形状。紧挨着是个篮球场和一片广场空地——这里是少年们的足球场，成年人也常常逗留，乐此不疲。从学校里面看，孩子们与外面的街区隔开；从学校外面看，幼儿园不仅是地标，更要紧的是，它向市中心西南方向贫穷的博萨区发射着强大的吸引力。
哥伦比亚波哥大地区卡组卡广场上方，吉安卡罗·马三提的一顶7500平方英尺的大华盖。
Less than a decade ago the big story here involved a pair of pioneering mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, and the transformations they brought about in a capital notorious for drugs and terrorism. Mr. Mockus focused on cultivating a culture of civil society, on seemingly little things like obedience to traffic signals, which were really about big things like promoting civic self-esteem, a sense of shared responsibility for the welfare of the city and a climate of workable streets and sidewalks. Then Mr. Peñalosa, his successor, promoted public space and tackled infrastructural improvements, installing bike lanes and a rapid bus system called TransMilenio that extended to the expanding population of poor people occupying remote districts like Bosa. Optimism boomed.
在不到十年前，这里的大新闻都围绕着两位具有开拓意识的市长为：安塔纳斯·莫卡思(Antanas Mockus)和恩里克·裴纳罗萨(Enrique Penalosa)，他们彻底改造了这个以毒品和恐怖主义闻名的首都。莫卡思重视公民社会的养成，从小处着手，比如提倡遵守红绿灯，来重建市民的尊严。他推广城市美好需责任共担的意识，还促成了马路与人行道和谐并存的大气候。之后的继任者裴纳罗萨先生则改善了公共空间，提升了基础设施，其中以新建自行车道和快速公交系统TransMilennio最为著名，这个系统延伸至类似于博萨这样贫困人口聚居的远郊。城市里的乐观主义情绪因此高涨。
But the bus system has deteriorated during the last several years, a victim of its own popularity but also of the failure by recent leaders to expand routes as promised, repair crumbling roads, relieve the overcrowding and fight crime. Green-minded laws fashioned to reduce car traffic and pollution, a big problem here, have perversely ended up, fueled by the TransMilenio’s woes, encouraging more Bogotans to get second cars and buy motorcycles. The ouster and arrest of another mayor last year on corruption charges was the last straw.
然而快速公交系统在近几年受损严重，因为载客量太大，而最近的市领导又未能扩充之前承诺的新路线、修缮需要维修的马路、减轻拥挤并打击犯罪。此外，以减少车流和污染为目的的“环保法”也事与愿违，更多的波哥大人买了第二辆轿车或摩托车。去年另一位市长遭罢免，并以贪污罪遭到逮捕，事情已到了让人忍无可忍的地步。
Bogotá had been “a cause,” as Mr. Mockus put it. Now it has become a problem.
正如莫卡思所说，波哥大曾是一项红火的事业，现在倒成了麻烦的代名词。
“We’re Latin,” he explained. A deadpan, wry, highly unconventional politician and former mathematics and philosophy professor, Mr. Mockus famously mooned student protesters as a university president and as mayor went on television while taking a shower to demonstrate the virtues of saving water. “The worst thing for a Latin man is to find himself raising another man’s child,” he told me when we met recently. He was talking about the refusal by many Colombian politicians to adopt plans their predecessors conceived, instead preferring to invent their own. So the ousted mayor, Samuel Moreno, had argued for a metro to deal with what the buses couldn’t seem to handle, which may well be necessary in a city whose capital district has almost the same population as New York.
“我们是拉丁人，”他说。莫卡思是一位不动声色、爱开玩笑，以不按常理出牌著称的政治家、前数学和哲学教授。莫卡思曾任命学生示威领袖为一所大学的校长，担任市长期间，他淋浴推广节水的画面还上了电视。“对于拉丁男人来说，最差的境遇莫过于发现养育的孩子是另一个男人的种。”最近在我们碰面的时候，他这样对我说。他抱怨的其实是众多哥伦比亚政治家不执行前任留下的计划方针，非要另辟蹊径的情结。这也是被罢免的市长塞缪·莫伦诺(Samuel Moreno)曾建议修地铁来解决公交巴士无法承受之重的原因之一。不过话说回来，对于一个人口与纽约相当的首都，这似乎很有必要。
But the existing system was left unattended. I took a mobbed bus one evening, and an hour and a half later, having crawled barely four miles, I struggled onto the street, exhausted. Pickpockets are common on crowded buses in cities everywhere. Here, though, a woman next to me said she watched a man steal her purse in front of her eyes a few nights earlier, unable to move her arms because the bus had been so jammed. Polls show optimism has fallen to its lowest point in 15 years.
然而，现有系统不再受重视。有天晚上，我乘坐了极度拥挤的巴士，一个半小时之后还未挪出4英里，于是我挣扎着下了车，气喘吁吁。无论在哪座城市，拥挤的巴士都备受扒手们的青睐。车上身边的一位妇女告诉我，就在几天前的一个晚上，她眼睁睁地看着一个男人偷走了她的包，胳膊却动弹不得，因为车实在是太挤了。民意调查显示，乐观主义情绪已经降至过去15年来的最低点。
The larger story of Bogotá’s former progress really goes beyond Mr. Mockus and Mr. Peñalosa to plans devised for the city more than a decade ago by remarkable architects and urban planners like Lorenzo Castro, who laid out squares, bridges, public spaces and other areas for civic improvement. A government initiative to recover parcels of the city taken over by private individuals (rich and poor), turning them into places for the benefit of whole communities, played an equally crucial role in changing the map and political climate.
波哥大之前的进步并不仅仅是莫卡思和裴纳罗萨的功劳，十多年前，才华横溢的建筑师和城市规划师洛伦佐·卡斯特罗(Lorenzo Castro)为城市做过精彩的规划，那时就已确定了广场、桥梁、公共空间和其他改善民生的功能区。政府还发起过一场收回被个人（不分穷富）侵占的城市空间运动，收回的空间改造成为社区福祉，这对改变城市面貌乃至转变政治气候起到同样关键的作用。
On a recent visit I found pockets of hope that still endure in works of public architecture built in and around the city, many linked to the rapid bus lines and the bike lanes. Ultimately Bogotá is a reminder that the economic and social lives of neighborhoods and whole cities rise and fall depending on access to public transit, public parks, public spaces.
在最近的一次造访中，我从散落城市各处的公共建筑中看到了生机，其中许多都与快速公交系统和自行车道相联。波哥大给人的警示是，街区的经济繁荣与社会生命乃至城市的大起大落都依赖于公共交通、公立公园以及公共空间的便捷程度。
El Tintal Public Library, a concrete behemoth in the Kennedy district, occupies a former garbage-processing plant. It was one of the major new libraries devised under Mr. Peñalosa’s leadership, close to the TransMilenio. Daniel Bermudez Samper, the architect, reused the truck ramps and the “nave” of the plant, where the trucks dumped their loads, to create a ceremonial entry connected to new parkland and a palatial, sky-lighted reading room, with a theater downstairs.
厄·庭达尔(El Tintal)公共图书馆是位于肯尼迪区的一个混凝土巨兽，这里从前是一个垃圾处理厂。它是在裴纳洛萨领导下新建的图书馆之一， TransMilenio快速公交系统可直达。建筑师丹尼尔·贝木德斯·森沛(Daniel Bermudez Samper)保留了垃圾处理厂的卡车匝道和倾泻垃圾的“中心广场”，建造了一个颇具仪式感的入口，通往一个新建公园以及一间宽敞的、自然照明的阅览室，另外下面还带有一个剧场。
When I visited, a librarian, Mayerlyn Carolina, told me that thousands of people use the place each day: “We have workshops in literature, we show movies, we have services for the elderly. It’s the community’s center.”
在我造访期间，图书管理员梅叶林·卡洛琳娜(Mayerlyn Carolina)告诉我，每天都有数千人在使用图书馆：“我们这里有文学工坊，放映电影，还有针对长者的特别服务。这里就是整个社区的中心。”
A dental student there, Julián Mahecha, said he had crossed town on the rapid bus line that morning to find a book. The bus had been a nightmare, he lamented, but he was grateful for the library, which was an anchor in the park and a safe haven.
当天图书馆里有一位学习牙科专业的学生，名叫胡里安·马赫查(Julian Mahecha)，他乘坐快速公交系统穿城来这里是为了找本书。乘公交就是一场噩梦，他抱怨道。但他对图书馆打心眼儿里感激，他说图书馆相当于这个公园里的船锚，是安全的避风港。
Likewise the more recent Jardín el Porvenir kindergarten, designed by Giancarlo Mazzanti, whose libraries and sports facilities in Medellín have helped redefine that city. It would be wrong to credit Mr. Mazzanti, Mr. Bermudez or any other single architect for too much of what has happened that’s good in Bogotá. Many noteworthy Colombian designers today share in what seems to be something of an architectural renaissance in the country. But Mr. Mazzanti’s works are at least illustrative.
与吉安卡罗·马三提(Giancarlo Mazzanti)设计的那间新波维尼尔幼儿园一样，波哥大的图书馆和运动设施正在重新定义这座城市。将波哥大的转变主要归功于马三提、贝木德斯或者其他建筑师，的确不妥当。今天，哥伦比亚有许多值得关注的设计师，他们都在为国家的建筑复兴作努力。但马三提的作品尤其具有代表性。
The kindergarten opened three years ago. The school is immaculate, maintained by a support staff that I saw toting spray bottles and walking around in surgical gear, clear signs of pride. Children were riding tricycles in the sunshine; eating in the bright cafeteria; pretending to nap in long neat rows in a shady classroom, like empanadas cooling on a giant baking sheet just removed from the oven.
幼儿园在三年前开园。园区一尘不染，我看见一名后勤员工背着喷射瓶，穿得像手术医生一般，他显然为这份工作感到非常自豪。孩子们在阳光下骑三轮车；在明亮的餐厅用餐；在阴凉的教室里成排地假寐，那场景就像刚出炉的本地肉馅卷饼被晾在巨大的烤盘上一样。
Indifferently constructed by the city, as are too many public buildings here, the 13,000-square-foot school, for 300 students, cost less than $1.2 million. Mr. Mazzanti, who won a national competition for the job, is becoming expert at wrangling a little architecture from a shoestring budget. The simple, angled pods, connected by ramps, balconies and stairs, inscribe a surprising variety of open spaces and overlapping vistas. Children can colonize separate, sheltered courtyards and master the labyrinth of passages.
与其他公共建筑一样，这一切都由市政负担。这座能容纳300名学生、占地面积达1200平方米的学校造价竟不到120万美元。马三提从全国范围的投标方案脱颖而出，他也因此成为了用极少的预算建造小规模建筑的专家。由匝道、阳台和楼梯相连的简洁、错落的矮楼，刻画出形态各异的公共空间和交错的视野。孩子们拥有各自独立、阴凉的围合空间，并对迷宫般的通道了如指掌。
Mr. Mazzanti has talked about architecture pushing children toward discovery, inspiring patterns of thinking and behavior. The school’s layout, taking advantage of daylight and shade, with brightly painted floors that temper the austerity of concrete and glass, creates a mix of tranquillity, serendipity and openness. It’s a laboratory for exploration and play.
马三提曾说建筑要鼓励孩子们勇于发现的精神，促成他们的思考与行为习惯。学校的布局充分利用了日光与阴翳的对比，亮色的地板中和了混凝土和玻璃的沉重，创造出宁静、意外并且开放的混合体。这里是探索与玩乐的实验室。
No project here succeeds without community input. Some 40 years ago, the Bosa district was a settlement of not quite 20,000. Now some 500,000 people, many of them refugees from the guerrillas and paramilitaries fighting in the countryside, cram together in what’s mostly an informal sprawl. Poverty is deeply entrenched and multilayered.
项目的成功有赖于社区的参与。四十多年前，博萨区的居民不足两万。现在则有五十万人口，很多都是乡下闹游击队和土匪时候的难民，他们为了躲避战事最后聚居在这里。这里的贫困根深蒂固，而且是多层次的。
The community center Bellavista, some distance from El Porvenir, an initiative of the Peñalosa mayoralty, is a vaulted, multipurpose brick structure with a garden, not distinguished architecturally but the only substantial building among lean-tos and shacks. Like the Tintal library it offers workshops in computing, knitting and child care; there are also legal services and free meals. María Ariza, a security guard, talked about how important the indoor pool has been for the neighborhood.
贝拉维斯塔社区中心距离波尔尼尔幼儿园有段距离，它也是裴纳洛萨任市长期间提议的结果。这个带穹顶、多功能的砖结构建筑有一个自己的院子，就建筑造诣方面来说缺少可圈可点之处，但它是一片披屋茅棚中唯一结实的楼。就像庭达尔图书馆一样， 这里开有电脑板、编织工艺课程以及幼儿护理课程，也提供法律援助和免费的简餐。一名叫玛利亚·阿里扎(Maria Ariza)的保安就提到，室内游泳池对于社区是多么的重要。
“These people have nothing else,” she told me, shaking her head, then in the course of chatting idly mentioned that she took the bus 45 minutes to work from her home each morning, while it was still dark and not safe to be on the streets, but that she walked home during the afternoons because she couldn’t afford the $1 TransMilenio fare both ways.
“这里的居民一无所有，”她摇着头告诉我说。她对我拉起了家常，说自己每天早上通勤要搭45分钟的公交，天都还没亮，街上很不安全，但下班就可以安全地步行回家，上下班都坐快速公交的话，需要1美元的车费，她可负担不起。
Some new public buildings in the city I found disheartening. I was taken on a tour of housing projects in Bosa. City officials have been pouring money into what resemble the faceless apartment blocks, remote from retail and street life, that plagued American cities during the last century. The most vibrant streets I saw, packed with small shops and crowds, were the rutted, messy ones that grew organically, informally. The situation is as it is elsewhere in underdeveloped neighborhoods: City planners and government officials need to upgrade housing and infrastructure, without undermining homegrown energy and ground-up urbanism.
城里有一些新落成的公共建筑也让我沮丧不已。我参观了博萨区的民居项目。城市官员在那些毫无特点的公寓楼项目上拼命砸钱，它们远离购物地点和街区生活，这不又犯了上世纪美国城市的通病吗？我见过的富有生机的街道都是小店林立、熙熙攘攘、车来车往，看起来乱糟糟的，呈现一种有机自发的态势。在所有不发达街区都面临这样的问题： 城市规划者和政府官员需要在不伤及原生态的能量和自下而上的城市化前提下，改善居民的居住条件和公共设施。
That’s partly the hope behind a 7,500-square-foot canopy Mr. Mazzanti has also designed over a concrete plaza in Cazucá, a truly forgotten place, perhaps the poorest and most violent slum in or around Bogotá, on a hillside not far from Bosa. A $614,000 project, paid mostly by Pies Descalzos, a private organization established by the singer Shakira, it came about after long negotiations with drug gangs that controlled the plaza, investing them in the plaza’s improvement, enlisting them in its maintenance. Mr. Mazzanti designed a field of large modules, dodecahedrons, made of green steel mesh and translucent panels, raised on slender steel tubes. The floating structure, perched along the side of a hill, suggests a thicket of trees, like umbrella pines, where there’s not a real tree in sight, a spectacle meant to be visible from far away.
马三提设计的面积近700平方米的大华盖，背后多少寄予了这样的希望。它位于被遗忘的卡祖卡的混凝土广场上方，离博萨不远的一处山坡上，这里可能是波哥大最为贫困和暴力事件最为严重的贫民窟。项目造价为61.4万美元，大部分资金来自歌手夏奇拉(Shakira)名下的一个私人机构，在与控制广场的毒品团伙长时间的谈判之后，该机构投资了广场的改建，并负责维护工作。马三提设计了一个大型模块组成的棚顶，模块由绿色钢丝网和半透明板做成，结构则由细钢管支撑。悬浮的结构栖息在半山腰，它有丛林般的外观，像伞形的松树。近看却无一真树，此景宜远观。
The canopy can look like a lot of architecture for such a small project, but that’s partly its value: to put Cazucá on the map and create a de facto town square beside the school (made of shipping containers, serving a population in which a quarter of the children are malnourished, I was told by the school’s principal). Now children play soccer under the canopy and clean up the square every day, and there’s a vegetable garden with tomatoes and herbs.
这个华盖看上去是一个建筑形式感很强的小项目，那也正是价值所在：让卡祖卡引起公众的注意，并在学校（由船运集装箱砌成，校长告诉我说，这座城市每四个儿童就有一个营养不良）旁边建一个真正的小镇广场。现在孩子们能在华盖下踢球，并且每天打扫广场，旁边还有一个种满了西红柿和香料的蔬菜园。
Back at Jardín el Porvenir the school’s director, Sandra Torres, said a waiting list of 400 children grows every month. She explained that the school invites mothers, including those whose children can’t attend, to take parental-skills classes at El Porvenir. Parents, I gathered, have been fleeing the crowded, aging public school next door, a prisonlike fortress surrounded by a tall brick wall, the antithesis of Mr. Mazzanti’s light and porous building.
回到波尔维尼尔的话题上来, 幼儿园主任桑德拉·托里斯(Sandra Torres)说，等候名单以每个月400名的速度在增长。她解释说，幼儿园会邀请母亲，包括那些孩子无法入园的母亲，来参加幼儿早教培训班。不难想象，当地的父母们是多么迫切地要逃离隔壁年久失修的公立幼儿园，那个高高的砖墙围合、监狱模样的堡垒， 与马三提先生设计的轻巧、多孔建筑形成了鲜明的对比。
There was an obvious metaphor in his design: the school as incubator, the open, oval fence enclosing the pods, the womb and eggs. The fence protects the children who remain linked to the neighborhood, “which they will have to master,” as the architect put it the other day. Predecessors like the American architect Sam Mockbee and the Dutch Structuralist Aldo van Eyck come to mind. Both were formal pioneers, often riffing on vernacular styles, but also on missions of social improvement.
他的设计带有明显的隐喻：幼儿园是孵化器，开放、椭圆的篱笆围合了小楼——就像子宫与卵细胞。篱笆将孩子们保护起来，同时保持他们与街区的联系，“孩子们需要掌控一切，”这位建筑师说道。这不禁令人想到他的前辈，比如美国建筑师山姆·莫克比(Sam Mockbee)、荷兰结构主义大师阿尔多·冯·艾克(Aldo van Eyck)。两位都是形式主义的先锋，他们经常在设计中运用到当地风格，而且也承担着社会改良的使命。
For his part Mr. Mazzanti has praised Cedric Price, the English architect, whose legacy from the heyday of Swinging London might seem germane to a different society and setting. But Price, who died almost a decade ago, preached a gospel of open-endedness and delight, of architecture as a catalyst for reshaping relationships between people and public institutions, the public and public space. Price embraced impermanence, in buildings and society. Architecture was forever adaptable to change, he said. His unbuilt Fun Palace, conceived with Joan Littlewood, the British theater director, proposed modules and movable parts. Mr. Mazzanti’s kindergarten and canopy are modular structures but also symbolic aggregators, bringing together ideas about childhood and education, lightness and play.
马三提俨然与英国建筑师塞德里克·普莱斯(Cedric Price)一脉相承, 他在“摇摆伦敦”的鼎盛时期留下的遗产或许与一个差异显著的社会、环境密不可分。但十年前仙去的普莱斯鼓吹开放性和愉悦感，四处宣扬建筑是重构人与公共机构的关系以及重建公众与公共空间关系的催化剂。普莱斯信奉建筑和社会的非永久性。建筑总是需要适应变化的，他说。他没有建成的玩乐宫(Fun Palace)是与琼·力特伍德(Joan Littlewood)共同设计的。这位英国的剧院总监提出了模块和可移动构成零件的设想。马三提的幼儿园和华盖都是模块结构，但更是有象征意义的聚合器，它将童年与教育、轻巧与玩乐聚拢在一起。
Before I left Bogotá, I met with Mr. Castro, the urban planner and architect, and what he said about the Tintal library could be said about El Porvenir and Cazucá too. “People in the neighborhood live in a room with five people in a small house with three other families, but they go there and see the space, the construction, the comfort and safety,” he told me. “And suddenly, maybe for the first time, they feel included in society, in the city. They can dream.”
在我离开波哥大前，我拜访了城市规划师和建筑师卡斯特罗。他对于庭达尔图书馆的看法，也适用与波尔维尼尔和卡祖卡。“在这片街区，经常是三四户人家住在一栋小屋子，而每间屋子里住着五六个人。他们在图书馆寻求着空间、构筑、舒适与安全，”他告诉我：“忽然间，也许是第一次，他们体会到被社会、被这座城市所接纳的感觉。他们可以有梦了。”