Ejercicio 2 · Gapped text: el concurso que no construyó nada
Gapped text: el concurso que no construyó nada: 6 preguntas con solución explicada y descarga en PDF.
Frases sueltas: A · This is not, however, what the records suggest. B · The difference was in what happened next. C · Few of them lasted more than a decade. D · Such objections were rarely made in public. E · It was, in other words, a failure worth having. F · Both men denied that this had been the plan. G · No hall was ever built on the site. Elige la frase que va en cada hueco. Sobra una. Se corrige solo y te explica cada fallo. Si lo prefieres en papel, lo tienes en PDF aquí arriba.
Ejercicio 2 · Gapped text: el concurso que no construyó nada
Frases sueltas: A · This is not, however, what the records suggest. B · The difference was in what happened next. C · Few of them lasted more than a decade. D · Such objections were rarely made in public. E · It was, in other words, a failure worth having. F · Both men denied that this had been the plan. G · No hall was ever built on the site. Elige la frase que va en cada hueco. Sobra una.
The competition that built nothing
In 1911 the city announced an architectural competition for a new concert hall and received one hundred and forty entries. The winning design, by a little known pair of architects from the north, was praised in every newspaper and then quietly shelved. (1)
It is tempting to read this as a straightforward story of municipal cowardice, of a bold idea defeated by cautious councillors. (2) The committee minutes, which survive almost complete, show something less dramatic and rather more familiar: a project that was approved repeatedly, in principle, by people who never had to find the money.
Objections did exist. The site was awkward, the acoustics were untested, and at least two members thought the roof would leak. (3) They were raised in letters between members, in a tone of studied reasonableness, and they were never put to a vote.
Meanwhile the winning architects went on to build a school, a swimming pool and, eventually, a much smaller hall in a neighbouring town. (4) That building, finished in 1926 and still in use, borrows the shape of the concert hall roof almost exactly, at a third of the size.
Historians of the period have counted at least nine similar competitions in Britain in the same decade. (5) What makes this one interesting is not that nothing was built, but that the losing entries were kept. The drawings, stored in a basement for eighty years, are now the best surviving record of what a generation of architects thought a public building should look like. (6)
- Hueco 1ABCDEFGG. Remata la frase anterior: el proyecto se archivó y en ese solar nunca se levantó la sala.
- Hueco 2ABCDEFGA. However contrasta con la lectura tentadora del párrafo anterior y anuncia lo que dicen las actas.
- Hueco 3ABCDEFGD. Sigue a la lista de objeciones y explica que no se hicieron públicas: por eso el texto continúa hablando de cartas privadas.
- Hueco 4ABCDEFGB. Marca el contraste entre lo que no se construyó y lo que sí, justo antes de describir el edificio de 1926.
- Hueco 5ABCDEFGC. Va detrás de los nueve concursos parecidos: pocos duraron más de una década.
- Hueco 6ABCDEFGE. Cierra el texto: gracias a los planos conservados, fue un fracaso que mereció la pena.