Warming up

The arts are usually divided into free arts, such as painting, sculpture, dance, theatre and music and applied arts such as design of furniture, architecture, and graphic design, in the applied arts, artists work with materials to construct objects with a purpose that must meet the needs of other people than the artist himself. For example, the design of a chair must be functional as well as practical, comfortable and beautiful. Artists can express themselves in their work through a personal style of design and in details.

Architecture: The art and science of designing and erecting buildings.

Architect: a person who designs buildings

Design: make a plan for. design a building; design a computer program.

Furniture: The movable articles in a room for living or working. This old Chinese square table is a very valuable piece of furniture.

1. Describe what you see in the two pictures. Where would you prefer to live ? why ?

Encourage them to find reasons for different feelings, beliefs, values of the different types of architecture. Find difference in functionality, design and comfort of two type of the house. On a deeper level, students prefer a certain type of house because they prefer a certain type of lifestyle.

Block of flats=apartment building traditional house

Block: A large building divided into separate units, such as apartments.

Apartment: A room or suite of rooms designed as a residence and generally located in a building occupied by more than one household.

Flat:

2. If you were free to design your dream house, what would that house look like? Lead students to think about purpose, design and choice of materials.

Building materials: stone, wood, glass, brick, plastic, paint, earth, steel, concrete, tile(瓦)

Balcony: an area with a wall and bars around it, against the outside wall of a building.

3. Find out the history of art and architecture, names of architects, famous buildings and works of art in the world.

Listening: you will listen to a dialogue between a young and married couple- Amy and Danny, and a shop assistant who helps them choose new furniture for their new houses.

Taste: A personal preference or liking He has a taste for folk songs.

Preference: The selecting of someone or something over another or others./ A teacher should not show preference for any one of his pupils.

Heater: An apparatus that heats or provides heat.

Speaking

Questions about the dialogue.

1. what are A and B talking about? Living in modern flat and traditional house

2. where would B prefer living and why? Modern flat-large and comfortable and convenient

3. where would A rather live and why? Traditional house-with garden and beautiful more person style

would prefer doing sth/to do sth.-in which house would you prefer to live?

Prefer doing sth-I prefer working on my own.

Prefer doing sth to doing sth-most American prefer coffee to tea.

Stand: bear sth that you don’t like./I cannot stand a lot of noise when I am reading. I cannot stand the heat.

Pre-reading

1. what do the buildings look like? Let the students think about the way architects find inspiration in nature. All are modern architecture for which architects were inspired by nature. They look like structures we can find in the natural world ,shapes of plants or animals

take examples =take an example

he likes taking examples to prove his ideas.

Reading:

1. man-made living environment: nature is environment for plants and animals, then man-made environment are probably cities.

2. look at: 關注，考慮， He began to look at his research in different ways

3. had its own ideas of beauty expressed in art an architecture.

4. find them designed, planned and built in different styles.

5. modernism: Modern thought, character

6. go against: children do sometimes go against their parents’ opinion./her father was so strict that she was scared to go against his wishes.

7. construct: build/ to construct a bridge.

8. in a way to =in a way of doing/ the way to get good marks in the exam is to work hard.

9. while: I am busy doing homework, while he is playing basketball.

10. equal: the same/One li is equal to half a kilometre./ ‘x = y’ means that x equals y/Three and five equals eight.

11. progress: Development or growth

12. impress: have a favorable effect on sb/ fix sth in sb’s mind/ we were deeply impressed with/ by his words.

13. cathedral: A large, important church.

14. Antonio Gaudi: born in spain in 1852. he studied architecture in Barcelona.

“陽光之城”、“歐洲之花”、“伊比利亞的珍珠”這些美麗的詞匯統統都是形容一個地方，那就是西班牙的巴塞羅那，它被塞萬提斯驕傲地稱為“世界上最美麗的城市”。地中海的暖風吹拂了它2000多年，它就像一位女神，在陽光海岸邊，在庇里牛斯山腳下，不斷創造著各種奇跡。在19世紀末20世紀初，巴塞羅那為世界帶來了畢加索、米羅、卡薩爾斯，還有同樣偉大的天才建筑師安東尼奧高迪。或者說，正是因為高迪，才有了巴塞羅那今日更輝煌絢爛的美麗。如果你還未曾到過巴塞羅那欣賞到高迪，那么《高迪的房子》一書可以讓你領略到高迪建筑的神秘與瑰麗。

　　高迪的建筑被認為是20世紀世界最有原創精神、最重要的建筑，是現代建筑藝術的代表。東方伊斯蘭風格、新哥特主義以及現代主義、自然主義等諸多元素都被他“高迪化”后，統一在了他的建筑中。在《高迪的房子》精美的圖文中，你會不由得感受到高迪創造的奇異的建筑中，所流動著的萬物的生機、自然的生命和對神的虔誠。高迪崇尚大自然，自然是他靈感的泉眼，他從不挖空心思的去“發明”什么特別的形式，只想著仿效大自然，像自然那樣去建筑，他說：“只有瘋子才會試圖去描繪世界上不存在的東西！”因此，在高迪的建筑中，絕少運用死板的直線，因為高迪認為自然界沒有直線存在，如果有，也是一大堆曲線轉換而成的。書中講到高迪“迷戀動、植物以及山脈的造型，他觀察入微，他所看到的自然美并不是刻意的美，而是具有效用、實用的美，所以尋找到他所要的美感--自然就是美，美即是實用，實用即是自然的存在，自然即是實用的展現。”

高迪是個瘋狂的建筑師，他把巴塞羅那當作自己揮灑的舞臺，盡情地放縱他一個個天才的設想，為巴塞羅那，更是為世界留下了格爾公園、米拉之家、巴特略之家、圣家堂等18件不朽的建筑杰作。這其中，有17項被西班牙列為國家級文物，3項被聯合國教科文組織列為世界文化遺產。在1926年6月的一個下午，一輛電車撞到了一位乞丐模樣的老人，當天他就去世了，巴塞羅那因此而失去了他們最偉大的建筑藝術家--安東尼奧高迪。在《高迪的房子》中欣賞這位貧窮而高貴的建筑天才留在人間的禮物，會有許多感動蕩漾心頭！

15. fantastic: very strange and unusual, not practical./fantastic dreams/stories/plan

16. despite: in spite of/Despite the bad weather we enjoyed our holiday./ remain modest despite one's achievements

17. stadium: a building for sports competition.

18. Bauhaus: the German Bauhaus School began with the ideas that the building of the future world could only be constructed by combining all the arts in ideal union. In 1923,the Bauhaus changed its programme with the slogan :art and techonogy-a new unity. In 1933, the Nazis in Germany made the work in Bauhaus impossible. But the then the style had already famous and found followers all over the world. The name of the school became the name of the style.

Questions on texts:

1. what is architecture related to?

2. how did great culture have their ideas of beauty expressed?

3. when did modernism appear?

4. how did modernist want to change society?

5. what materials do modern architects use?

6. what does modern architect mean to many people?

7. why do many countries want to build the most modern-looking buildings?

8. how do modern building impress us?

9. why do many people not like modern buildings?

10. what examples of ancient architectures are mentioned?

11. what are the characteristics of ancient architecture?

12. who was Antonio Gaudi, and what did he find?

13. how did he take examples from nature?

14. what is architecture by Gaudi like?

15. was Gaudi a traditional architect or modern one?

16. who else were also inspired by nature?

17. what is the 2008 Olympic Stadium like?

Paragraph1 architecture( what, why, how)

Paragraph 2 modernism( when, who, why, how)

Paragraph 3 building materials( traditional, modern, what, why)

Paragraph 4 characteristics of modern building( huge, boxes, flat roofs, sharp corners, glass walls, hard, unfriendly)

Paragraph 5 ancient architecture( examples, characteristics)

Paragraph 6 Antonio Gaudi (ideas, style, materials, impressions)

Paragraph 7 other examples (Frank Lloyd Wright, the Opera House)

Paragraph 8 the 2008 Olympic Stadium( gray net, bird’s nest, soft materials, plastic bags, flowing lines, round shapes, warm, friendly)