Задание 10 из ЕГЭ по английскому языку: задача 26

2. The restoration of the city

3. A difficult choice

4. A multisided person

5. A very strong building

6. A very long construction

7. The last shelter of the architect

8. An intellectual pastime

A. “Architecture aims at Eternity,” said the great British architect Sir Christopher Wren. This may appear a rather arrogant statement today, but in Wren’s case we can forgive such feelings. His great buildings still look beautiful and majestic. His greatest masterpiece, St Paul’s cathedral in London, is a fundamental part of the London skyline. Because it survived the bombing raids during the World War II, it has come to be a symbol of strength and hope.

B. Wren was not only an architect. He was interested in everything and was a great man of science, or natural philosophy as it was known in the 17th century. In fact, he came relatively late to architecture. When he was still a teenager, he began doing his own scientific experiments. For example, he made models of the solar system and of how muscles work. When he was a student at Oxford University, he did experiments in anatomy and made detailed drawings of the human brain.

C. Wren was a friend of the other great scientists of the day and was a founding member of the Royal Society. Wren once organized a competition for his friends to see which of them could prove that the force that keeps the planets in their orbit decreases as an inverse square of the distance from the sun. They didn’t succeed. Three years later, Newton published his proof together with his Law of Universal Gravitation.

D. Wren was interested in everything in the world around him, including, naturally, architecture. He had read “On Architecture” by the Roman writer Vitruvius and later visited Rome, where he was very impressed by the magnificent buildings. Wren had very clear ideas about the purpose of architecture. It was about beauty, elegance and power. At the same time, it was about mathematics and geometry, and providing simple solutions to complex engineering problems.

E. In 1664, Wren was asked to design the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. A year later, he designed a chapel for Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1666, most of London was destroyed in the Great Fire. Now was the time for a great architect to come forward and rebuild the city in a grand style that was suitable for the English capital. Wren produced detailed plans. He replaced the old, winding streets with a geometrical plan of the street. The plan was never approved. However, it did influence on other architects, especially in America.

F. The building of St Paul’s Cathedral took 35 years to complete. The large dome of it is still a prominent feature of the London skyline. The design and construction of the dome shows clearly how Wren wanted to provide a simple, beautiful solution to a difficult engineering problem. Architecture writer Harry Mount comments, “Wren used all his engineering skill to create something beautiful that hid the complex structures that supported it.”

G. St Paul’s is Wren’s greatest work. So it seems appropriate that Wren is buried in the cathedral that he created. The epitaph on the tomb stone is written in Latin. In English, it translates as, “Here lies buried Christopher Wren, the builder of this church and city; who lived beyond the age of ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. If you want to see his memorial, look around you.”