Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an architecture class.

旁白：请听一段建筑学讲座的片段。

The professor has been discussing housing designs.

教授正在谈论房屋设计。

Professor: Alright, in our last class we began our discussion of housing designs in the United States from the 1940s.

教授：好的，在我们上一堂课上，我们开始讨论20世纪40年代的美国房屋设计。

You'll remember, for example, that we looked at some photos and discussed apartment complex in Chicago from that decade.

比如，你们还记得我们看了一些照片，讨论了那个时代芝加哥的公寓情结。

Now, today, let's talk about housing design in the suburbs.

现在，今天我们要谈论郊区的房屋设计。

The demand for low-cost housing outside the cities increased in the late 1940s after World War II as a whole generation of young families needed affordable housing, and a firm called Levitt & Sons strove to meet this demand in some pretty innovative ways.

对于城外低价住房的需要在20世纪40年代末期增加了，在二战后一代人需要可负担的住房，有一家名为Levitt & Sons的公司努力通过相当创新的方式来解决这个问题。

They designed buildings based on the demands of the public, not so much their own artistic vision, and created a residential community in the state of New York that became known as Levittown.

他们基于大众的需要设计了住所，他们并不怎么在意艺术性，而是设计了一个纽约的居住社区，这个社区后来被称为是莱维敦。

Levittown was the first suburb of its kind and it started out with 2,000 homes.

莱维敦是第一片这样的郊区，它初始的时候有2000户人家。

They were called "Cape Cod houses", the "Cape Cod model", and they were designed to look like the historical cottages in the New England states in the northeastern United States.

它们被称为Cape Cod houses， Cape Cod model，它们被设计得像是美国东北部的新英格兰州。

The original floor plan was very simple.

一开始的建筑方案是很简单的。

The living room was in the front of the house with windows looking out towards the street.

起居室在房子前面，有窗户可以看到外面的街道。

You also had two bedrooms, um, a bathroom and a kitchen.

还有两个卧室，嗯，一个浴室和一个厨房。

Everything was on one floor.

所有的房间是在一层楼上的。

The bathroom was right next to the kitchen, which was a way of keeping building costs down since the two rooms could rely on just one plumbing system.

浴室和厨房挨着，这样可以降低开支，因为这两个房间可以共用一套管道系统。

Another feature of this Cape Cod house is that it could be expanded as families grew and needed more space.

Cape Cod房屋的另一个特征是在一个家庭扩大以后，它也可以扩大空间。

You had the downstairs but up the stairs the house actually had unfinished attic space as well.

房屋不仅有底层的房间，而且高层的房间之上还有未完成的阁楼部分。

Levitt & Sons promoted their houses saying this attic space could easily be converted into another bedroom or even two, and then there was always the possibility of building additional rooms onto the house later.

Levitt & Sons在推销他们的房子时说，这种阁楼可以很简单地被转化成一间卧室，甚至两间，并且以后也还可以继续建造新的房间。

Each house was built the same way and with the same materials.

每一栋房子都是以相同的方式建造的，用的都是同样的材料。

All parts were standardized so houses could be built economically.

所有的部分都是标准化的，这样建造一所房子会变得更加经济省钱。

This was important because it meant that they were affordable for young families who wanted to live outside of the city.

这一点很重要，因为这意味着想住在郊区的年轻家庭可以负担得起。

As a result, what you had was a whole community of houses that, except for the color of their roof and walls, were identical.

结果就是，整个社区的房子除了屋顶和墙壁的颜色都是一模一样的。

So eventually there's going to be a demand for some variety, right?

所以最终人们会需要房子变得多样化，是吗？

After a couple of years, Levitt & Sons came up with a second design.

在几年之后，Levitt & Sons研发了第二种设计。

Well, they called it a second design because it had a slightly different roof.

他们把它成为第二种设计是因为它和第一种设计的屋顶不一样。

Plus, the exterior had a more modern look.

另外，房屋外表看起来更现代化。

This model was called a ranch house.

这一次的模型被称为是农场房屋。

Now, I'm guessing it wasn't too expensive or time-consuming for Levitt to come up with this idea, but it was certainly efficient and hugely popular with families.

我猜这并没有花费Levitt很多金钱和时间来想出这个方案，但是这个主意在家庭之间是很高效且非常流行的。

The Ranch is like the Cape Cod except that the living room is in the back of the house instead of the front, and on this Ranch model there is one more important feature that is not present in the Cape Cod.

这种农场房屋类似于Cape Cod，除了起居室在房屋的后面，而不是前面，在这个农场房屋模型里，还有一个和Cape Cod不同的重要特征。

It has a large window in the living room called a "picture window", which gives you a kind of "framed view" of the outside.

在起居室里有一扇大窗户，被称为观景窗，可以呈现给居住者关于外部的框架构图。

The way the Ranch is set up when you look out this picture window from the living room you're looking out from the back of the house instead of from the front.

建造农场房屋的方式是，当居住者从观景窗向外看，他们是从房屋背后往前看，而不是从前面往前看。

Parents could watch the children playing in the backyard, the grassy area behind the house rather than a view of the street.

父母可以看到孩子在后院玩耍，看到屋子后面的土地，而不仅仅是街景。

So here was a way for families to disconnect their home, their house, their private lives from the outside world, which was represented by the street that led to work and school, which really seems like the thing they had been looking for all along, but the floor plan was just like the Cape Cod only, you know, turned 90 degrees.

所以这就使得居住者可以把自己的家庭、自己的房屋、自己的私人生活和外界世界隔绝开，而外部世界表现为通往工作场所和学校的街道，这种设计符合了现代家庭苦苦追寻的住所样子，只有底层的设计还是保持了Cape Cod，你知道的，改变了90度。

Levitt & Sons offered their ranch houses for sales at a low price.

Levitt & Sons把他们的农场房屋低价出售。

They could do that because they were using the simple and therefore cost-saving building methods.

他们可以做到低价出售，是因为他们使用了简单且低成本的建筑方法。

Another way they kept construction prices down was to train workers who went from house to house doing a specific task, sort of like an assembly line.

他们另一种降低成本的办法是去训练专项工人，他们在房屋建筑里每个人只负责一块特定的工作，类似于生产线的装配工人。

For example, you might have a painter whose job was to paint the doors of each house and then it would be someone else's job to install the doors.

例如，会有一个油漆工，专门负责粉刷每一套房子，但是安装门的活儿就是另一个人专门负责。

This way houses went up quickly, saving time and money.

这样房子建的很快，既节省时间也节省金钱。

And the Levitt's ideas caught on.

Levitt的想法被延续了下去。

In the early 1950s, their designs became a model for suburb construction throughout the country.

在20世纪50年代早期，他们的设计就变成了全国范围内的郊区建筑的模板。