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  3. Architectural morphology is the study of how shifting cultural and environmental conditions produce changes in an architectural

Architectural morphology is the study of how shifting cultural and environmental conditions produce changes in an architectural

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问题     Architectural morphology is the study of how shifting cultural and environmental conditions produce changes in an architectural form. When applied to the mission churches of New Mexico exemplifying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish colonial architecture in what is now the southwestern United States, architectural morphology reveals much about how Native American culture transformed the traditional European church architecture of the Spanish missionaries who hoped to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
    Many studies of these mission churches have carefully documented the history and design of their unique architectural form, most attribute the churches’ radical departure from their sixteenth-century European predecessors to local climate and a less-mechanized building technology. The limitations imposed by manual labor and the locally available materials of mud-brick and timber necessitated a divergence from the original European church model. However, the emergence of a church form suited to life in the Southwest was rooted in something more fundamental than material and technique. The new architecture resulted from cultural forces in both the Spanish colonial and indigenous Native American societies, each with competing ideas about form and space and different ways of conveying these ideas symbolically.
    For example, the mission churches share certain spatial qualities with the indigenous kiva, a round, partly subterranean room used by many Southwest Native American communities for important rituals. Like the kiva it was intended to replace, the typical mission church had thick walls of adobe (sun-dried earth and straw), a beaten-earth floor, and one or two small windows. In deference to European custom, the ceilings of these churches were higher than those of the traditional kiva. However, with the limited lighting afforded by their few small windows, these churches still suggest the kiva’s characteristically low, boxlike, earth-hugging interior. Thus, although pragmatic factors of construction may have contributed to the shape of the mission churches, as earlier studies suggest, the provision of a sacred space consistent with indigenous traditions may also have been an important consideration in their design.
    The continued viability of the kiva itself in Spanish mission settlements has also been underestimated by historians. Freestanding kivas discovered in the ruins of European-style missionary communities have been explained by some historians as examples of “superposition”， Under this theory, Christian domination over indigenous faiths is dramatized by surrounding the kiva with Christian buildings. However, as James Ivey points out, such superposition was unlikely, since historical records indicate that most Spanish missionaries, arriving in the Southwest with little or no military support, wisely adopted a somewhat conciliatory attitude toward the use of the kiva at least initially. This fact, and the careful, solitary placement of the kiva in the center of the mission-complex courtyards, suggests an intention to highlight the importance of the kiva rather than to diminish it.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
选项 A、correct some misinterpretations about the development of an architectural form
B、compare the traditional church architectures of two different cultures
C、examine the influence of a religious architectural style on secular buildings
D、explain the nature of the contrast between two different architectural styles
E、trace the European roots of an architectural style used in the United States
答案A
解析 表面看起来本文的这四段之间是取同关系，会被误认为是总分结构，其实本文也是新老观点对比。第一段的功能是引出文章的主旨，第二段在提出“土著文化影响欧洲教堂”这一观点之前，先提出了“客观因素改变欧洲教堂”这一老观点并加以反驳。第三段只是支持第二段观点的例子。第四段内部也是通过批判some historical的观点来得到最后的新观点。所以本文每一次提出新观点，都是通过反驳老观点得到的，因此本文本质上是新老观点对比型文章，主旨题的正确选项应该同时涵盖新老观点和批判。A项misinterpretations指代第二段的“客观因素”和第四段some historical的观点，an architectural form指代美国的欧洲教堂，correct意为“纠正”，既要有批判也要有新观点，在文中有对应，故选项A正确。B项干扰项，将欧洲教堂和土教堂这两种教堂进行比较的其实只有第三段。该选项属于细节，排除。C项文中未提及secular buildings。D项contrast强调不同之处，本文强调的是共同之处。E项European roots不正确。
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