但新造的摩天大厦不是“假冒”，也没有刻意模仿某些过去的风格。有人称它们为“裸体建筑”。建筑师们侧重打造它们的外形美，避免陷在过时的外表装饰上。色彩被派上了用场。有几座摩天大厦，外墙是黑砖，楼顶却刷得金黄。如位于纽约的美国供暖大厦就是黑金相间。还有旧金山的里奇菲尔德大厦也是这样。其他摩天大厦的底部楼层是深红色砖墙，越往上，颜色越浅。克莱斯勒公司总部大楼和帝国大厦的外部都使用了不锈钢的镍色，鲜明锃亮。
几百扇窗户不再仅仅是在墙上打洞那么简单，而是要起到使整个建筑物增添美观的作用。有些摩天大厦的窗户看起来就像长条纹，沿楼层底部直达顶层。它们就像哥特式大教堂的线条一样，将人的视线往上引。其它的则将窗户成排安装，使长条纹走横向，而不是直上直下的。还有一些摩天大厦的窗户看起来像是积木，小积木搭在大积木上。
我还没介绍摩天大厦的用途呢。你们也许早就知道。有些用作办公大楼，有些用作居住公寓。人们建造摩天大厦当然不是为了好玩。它们是要派用场的。因为建造摩天大厦要花费好几百万美元，所以建成后的大楼必须能挣钱。摩天大厦主要是通过出租办公室或套房来赚钱的。在写字楼的摩天大厦里常常有银行、商店，第一层甚至还有剧院。有些写字楼大厦有上万人在里面上班，所以一到下午五六点钟下班时，这些人都同时下班回家，一下子都拥挤在人行道上，使街道上的交通堵塞。
摩天大厦远看近看都很壮观。对它们了解越多，就越觉得它们神奇。你要是从来没见过摩天大厦，我这样说你就会想到它们有多高了。大厦里的邮件通道必须安装一些能减缓邮件下滑速度的部件，否则邮件下滑太快，会起火！
NEW IDEAS
新思维
HAVE you ever seen a blue house？Blue all over，I mean—blue roof，blue walls，blue chimney.I’ve never seen a house like that，but I’m sure it would be freaky looking.
Have you ever seen a house all made of steel and glass？Such a house might seem freaky at first，but it would be a different kind of freakiness from the blue house.The blue house could have no good reason for being blue；but a steel and glass house might have a very good reason for being made all of steel and glass.After you became used to it，you might like it very much and find it more healthful to live in than an ordinary house.But the blue house—well，I can’t see what advantage you would get from a blue house，no matter how used to it you became.
A blue house and a steel and glass house have no ancestors.But most styles in architecture do have ancestors，long lines of ancestors.
Just as
the Roman style developed from the Greek andthe Romanesque style developed from the Roman and the Gothic style developed from the Romanesque，so most new styles have grown from past styles in architecture.And most buildings put up nowadays make use of the styles that have been found good or beautiful （or both）in the past.
This modern use of past styles seems quite right as long as the modern buildings have the same uses as the buildings of the past.But many modern buildings have entirely new uses not even imagined by the architects of past styles.And so it seems to some architects that these buildings should be just as free from past styles as the uses of the buildings are.Why design a modern electric power house in Gothic style when there is no connection between a power house and any building built when Gothic architecture was in its glory？Why have Roman columns on a gasoline station when the Romans had never heard of gasoline stations？
Many architects，therefore，find it better to design their buildings in a manner that they think suited to the modern use of the building.They think it better to have the styleof the building show the purpose of the building than to have its use concealed in the forms of the past.This very modern style of architecture is sometimes called functional because it shows the use or function of the building.
You can see what I mean very well in the history of sky-scrapers.The early sky-scrapers generally had huge Renaissance cornices.Often they had Greek or Roman columns at the main entrance.Later it was thought that the Gothic style was most suitable for sky-scrapers，as in the Woolworth Building in New York City，because of the vertical emphasis in both sky-scraper and Gothic cathedral.But more recent sky-scrapers are designed to look like what they are，steel skeletons covered with a protecting material.
A good example of such a sky-scraper is the office building of the United Nations which was built after World War II in New York City.It is a tall flat-sided building shaped like a thin closed book standing upright.It looks so thin that you think perhaps a very large pair of book-ends might help keep it from blowing over.But no book-ends are needed for，like all sky-scrapers，this building is anchored deep in the ground by strong steel girders.It is a beautiful building because it is so plain and simple.It has no fancy decorations，no gargoyles，no cornices，no sculptured figures.It has no curved lines；all its lines are straight up-and-down or straight across from side-to-side.The many windows of the United Nations building keep it from being too plain and simple.The windows also make it seem not only well-lighted but light in weight.
And what a lot of windows this building has！A housewife can wash the dishes after dinner in less than half an hour.It takes a man several hours to wash all the windows in a house.Think what a big job it is to wash all the windows in the United Nations building.It is supposed to have about five acres of windows.
Even dwellings have been designed to match their present purpose instead of using styles of the past.An American architect named Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the first to design houses in a functional style.He was at first more appreciated in foreign countries than in the United States.One of his best-known buildings is the earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel in Tokyo，Japan，which doesn’t resemble any other building you have ever seen.
In Europe there has grown up a style of architecture that，like the house of glass and steel，has no ancestors.In Holland and Germany this functional style has been very much used for dwellings.They are constructed of steel and glass，brick and concrete，and they seem to use these materials better than any past style could.For instance，they generally have flat roofs instead of sloping roofs，because the use of steel has made the roofs strong enough to stand any weight of snow that might fall upon them.These flat roofs are very convenient for sun porches.
