2017考研英语阅读精选：世界最环保建筑智能吗?
考研英语阅读真题中的文章，多摘自英美主流外刊，有时候你认识所有单词、搞清全部语法还不够，还需要了解英美文化，掌握他们的表达方式，这就是阅读的潜台词。有时候是一些俗语和俚语，有时候是固定搭配，有时候需要借助历史、风俗、文化才能理解某种现象或表达。总之，这些地道的英语文章背后都有潜台词，一般人不容易读出，但往往是理解文章的关键。2017考研复习开启，新东方在线考研分享《2017考研英语阅读精选》，赶快来学习吧！
Tomorrow’s buildings: Is world’s greenest office smart?
未来建筑：世界最环保建筑智能吗?
The Edge office building in Amsterdam prides itself on good coffee, lots of
natural light - no desk is far from a window - and a gym that allows you not
just to get fit but also to contribute to the energy supply of the office.
位于阿姆斯特丹的“边缘”大厦以美味咖啡和自然光线著称-所有办公桌都靠窗-大厦内还有一个健身房，不仅可以用来健身，还能为办公室提供能源。
It also flushes its toilets with rainwater, has a robot security guard that
will challenge you if you wander around at night and a whole range of clever
technology to make the building sustainable.
该栋大厦采集雨水冲洗厕所，如果你三更半夜在大楼附近游荡，机器人保安会上前对你进行盘问。大厦运用了一整套智能技术来保证其可持续性。
The developers behind it, Dutch firm OVG, liked it so much that they moved
in when it was finished.
大厦发明者是一家荷兰公司OVG。他们非常喜欢这个设计，因此完工后他们便搬了进来。
So is the office that has already been dubbed the world’s greenest, really
as smart as it seems?
这栋被称为世界最环保的办公大楼，在智能方面是否真的名副其实呢?
The building, whose main tenant is consultancy firm Deloitte and was
designed by London-based architects PLP Architecture, boasts "smart" ceilings
embedded with 28,000 sensors, which measure temperature, light, motion and
humidity. The lighting, designed by Phillips, is also smart - each one of the
LED panels is ultra-efficient and requires only a tiny amount of
electricity.
这座大楼的主要用户是咨询公司德勤，它由总部设在伦敦的PLP建筑事务所设计，号称其“智能”天花板内置了28000个传感器，可以测量温度、光线、运动和湿度。智能照明系统由飞利浦设计-每个LED显示屏效率超高且消耗能源量极低。
Workers can control the temperature, lighting and blinds via a series of
apps on their smartphones and work is ongoing to unify them.
职员可通过智能手机上一系列APP来控制大楼温度、光线和百叶窗，而不用中断工作。
Users select the temperature they want from a sliding gauge on their phone
and it will in turn adjust the valves in the pipes above their head. Each valve
controls the temperature of around four desks so they do have to hope that the
colleague sitting next to them is also happy with the change.
用户可通过手机上的温度表选择适合自己的温度，同时他们头顶管道的阀门会相应调节，每支阀门控制4张办公桌范围内的温度。但愿他周围的同事乐意接受温度的改变。
Facilities manager Wybe Van der Mey tells me, with some degree of pride,
that in the first year of opening he only received a handful of complaints about
the heating.
后勤经理Wybe Van der Mey略带几分骄傲地告诉我，在大楼开放的第一年，他只接到很少的关于供暖方面的投诉。
"In a traditional building that would be our headache number one," he
said.
“对于传统办公大楼，供暖将会是头号难题。”他说。
Workers can also use one of the apps to book meeting rooms, open lockers
and check in to their desks.
职员同时可通过一款手机app预订会议室、打开储物柜以及解锁办公桌。
When The Edge first opened its doors in September 2014, around 20% of the
workers checked themselves in via the app. That quickly fell to 10% and is now
at around 1%, according to Mr Van der Mey.
据Van der
May先生说，2014年9月“边缘”大楼首次开放时，约20%的员工通过手机软件上班打卡。很快这个比例降到10%，而现在只有1%。
"We hoped everyone would check in to their desks daily but they haven’t
done that."
“我们原本希望所有人每天通过软件打卡办公，但是他们还没做到。”
Each floor of Deloitte’s office is laid out exactly the same, making it the
ultimate hot-desking environment. It should in theory mean the firm can allocate
desks - if people used the app.
德勤每一层办公楼的布局完全相同，使得“办公桌轮用制”十分盛行。理论上，公司可以分配办公桌-前提是员工使用app。
"The dream of a facilities manager is to tell people where to go based on
available space. Technically it is possible, but behaviourally it is not. People
want to go to the same place every day and sit with their peers."
“后勤经理的梦想就是根据可用空间告诉人们该去哪里入座。理论上来讲，这是可行的，但操作起来却比较难，因为人们总喜欢每天去同样的地方，和同伴坐在一起。”
Neither is the app-based system to book meeting rooms running entirely
smoothly. Many don’t use it, leading to double-booked rooms, while others book
rooms that they never intend to use because it gains them an extra parking
space.
而基于app的会议室预订系统运行也并不顺利。很多人根本不用这个系统，导致出现有些会议室重复预订，而有些人订了会议室却没打算用，仅仅把它作为额外的备用工作空间。
It is unclear how many use the stickers with QR codes which adorn all the
meeting rooms, allowing users to connect to everything inside the room via their
smartphone - including powering up the 4K screens to show their own
presentations, controlling the lighting and heating and even lowering the blinds
to stop their audience from daydreaming out of the window.
目前根本不清楚有多少人通过扫描会议室的二维码来通过智能手机连接会议室内设备-包括开启4K屏幕分享PPT、控制灯光和供暖，甚至关上百叶窗来阻止听众望向窗外发呆做白日梦。
There is no doubting The Edge’s green credentials however.
然而，从未有人质疑“边缘”的环保性能。
In December 2014 it received the highest ever BREEAM (Building Research
Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology) which has become the de
facto test for sustainability in buildings.
2014年12月，该大楼在英国绿色建筑研究机构(BRE)的BREEAM绿色建筑评估中得分最高，成为最佳可持续性办公建筑。
It got an outstanding rating with the highest-ever score of 98.36%, making
it a star pupil in a business world that is increasingly being pushed to go
green.
其得分为史上最高-98.36%，在企业界被敦促走向绿色环保的今天，它成为一颗闪亮新秀。
It means that Mr Van der Mey has become used to a new job role - as tour
guide. He has hosted architects, developers and news outlets and rejected a
request from the Amsterdam tourist board to show a group of Chinese tourists
around the building.
Mey先生已习惯了他的新工作角色-导游。他已经招待了包括建筑师、开发商和新闻机构在内的参观者，还拒绝了阿姆斯特丹旅游局带领中国旅游团参观的请求。
They come to see a range of features, including an innovative approach to
solar power.
这些来访者想来看看这一系列特征，包括太阳能的创新利用方法。
When it became clear to developer OVG that covering the roof with solar
panels was not going to be enough to provide 100% of The Edge’s electricity it
turned to its neighbours - the VU University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam
University of Applied Sciences - to install a further 4,100 sq m (44,100 sq ft)
of solar panels on their rooftops in return for the free use of any spare
electricity.
当开发者OVG逐渐明白，仅仅把房顶装满太阳能电池板不能100%为“边缘”供电时，他们开始向邻居求助-阿姆斯特丹自由大学及阿姆斯特丹大学应用科学-又在房顶安装了4100平方米(44100平方英尺)的太阳能电池板以保证大楼额外用电自由。
The slanted atrium also has a job to do - draining off rainwater to be
collected in troughs and reused for cleaning and flushing the toilets.
倾斜的中庭不无用处-排掉并将雨水收集到水槽，循环利用冲洗厕所。
The building is doing its bit to encourage its workers to go greener. There
is a huge space for bikes and a whole wall dedicated to electric car charging
points in the underground car park.
大楼竭尽所能鼓励员工注重环保。地下停车场有很大一片空间停放自行车，还有一整面墙可为电动汽车充电。
The building is heated and cooled via an aquifer thermal energy storage
system. Hot water is stored in wells in the ground during summer to help heat
the building in winter and cold water in the same way in the winter to cool the
building in the warmer months.
这栋大楼通过蓄水层热能储存系统供热和制冷。夏天地下井中会储存热水，冬天来为大楼供热;而冬天冷水同样储存在地下井中，在夏天为大楼制冷。
There are no radiators in the building - all the heating is provided by
cables that run through the ceilings. One carries data and the other water to
provide an ambient temperature across the whole structure.
大楼中没有暖气片-所有热量通过天花板中布满的管网提供。一条缆线传输数据，另一条通水，来为整个结构调节周边温度。
Both Deloitte, the building’s main tenant, and OVG, the developer, are open
about the fact that The Edge is an experimental project and that not everything
has worked.
主要用户德勤以及开发者OVG非常坦诚地承认，“边缘”大楼是一项实验工程，且并非所有功能都能够利用。
One of its biggest challenges is making sense of the mountains of data
generated by the sensors.
他们面临的最大的挑战之一就是弄明白传感器输出的庞大数据的含义。
Maintaining the smartness of The Edge has, Mr Van der Mey jokes, turned his
hair grey.
Mey先生开玩笑说，维护运营“边缘”的智能功能，让他白了头。
"It is challenging to cope with all the data and we are still learning how
to read it," he told the BBC.
“要处理所有数据非常具有挑战性，而且我们仍在学习如何阅读这些数据。”他告诉BBC。
For the moment the answer lies in data dashboards, which both the
facilities teams and workers can access.
目前答案在数据仪表盘上，后勤团队及职员均可获得这些数据。
It displays a variety of real-time data points - including the number of
workers in the building at any given time, how many visitors, energy consumption
and temperature.
它能显示一系列实时数据点-包括任意时刻大楼中的员工数、来访者人数、能源消耗以及温度。
It also has some more fun data sets, such as a pie-chart showing how much
coffee, and what type, is being consumed in the building at any given time.
它还有一些有意思的数据设定，比如能够通过饼状图显示任意时刻人们喝了多少咖啡以及什么类型的咖啡。
It became apparent from the data that lattes and cappuccinos were by far
the most popular choice, meaning milk was frequently running out so Deloitte
asked the manufacturer to make a new bespoke model with a larger compartment for
milk - a real world example of how access to data can improve working lives.
从数据中很明显能够看出，至今为止，拿铁和卡布奇诺是最受欢迎的咖啡种类，牛奶常常被用光，因此德勤要求供应商制造新型定制版本的咖啡，牛奶比重加大-这是通过读取数据来提高工作生活的一个真实案例。
Every coffee machine is also connected to the internet, meaning facilities
staff can see which ones are getting low and refill them before someone finds it
empty.
每个咖啡机都联网，后勤工作人员能够看到哪个咖啡机量不足了，在下一位员工发现以前将其加满。
The towel rails in the bathrooms are similarly connected.
卫生间的毛巾架也像这样进行了联网设置。
The hours that cleaners work have also been changed as a result of the data
and Mr van der Mey is keen for this to happen more often.
由于传感器数据，清洁工的工作时间也随之改变，Mey先生衷心希望这样的情况可以时常发生。
"We want to predict how things will happen in the building - that will be
the really smart thing," he said.
“我们想要预测大楼发生的事情-那才是真正的智能建筑。”他说。
页:
[1]