B. Keywords.

art gallery, main entrance, transparency, contrast.
Vocabulary.

transparency, complement, continuity, Palais du Louvre, Glass Pyramid.
B1. You are going to hear an introduction of Palais du Louvre and the Louvre Pyramid. Complete the following facts.
The Palais du Louvre stands at the heart of Paris, and houses one of the world's greatest collections of works of art.
The original palace dates from 1527, and it was extended and added to over the next four centuries.
It was first used as a public art gallery in 1793.
In 1981, the Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei was commissioned to redevelop the public part of the Louvre and create more space for reception areas and services.
He designed the famous Glass Pyramid, which serves as the main entrance to the building, leading underground to the museum and art gallery.
The pyramid is 21 meters high and 33 meters wide, and uses a combination of steel tubes, cables and sheet glass.
It's completed in 1988, and quickly became a major tourist attraction in its own right.
B2. Now you're going to hear an architect commenting on the Louvre Pyramid, fill in the blanks according to what you hear.
I like the Louvre Pyramid because of its transparency, because you can just look through it and it has a very light effect.
It is not heavy and it's made of glass and so it looks like a light object.
And I like it for its contrast of shapes, because it is such a contrast to the Louvre building that in fact it doesn't interfere with the beauty of the Louvre, but it even, it emphasizes the beauty of the Louvre.
And in the evening when this pyramid is lighted, it's just a source of light to put the Louvre into a new light. And this has for me also a symbolic meaning.
And it is such an unexpected shape in this urban context, just to use a traditional shape of a pyramid built in new materials with new technologies, high-tech and so on, that it is a completely surprising effect.
So that people get shocked by it or they like it, but there is nobody who would be uninvolved or who could just pass and not notice this building. So it's something you have to look at.
And I think this is also very important in building and creating something in the cities, and exactly for example close to these historical buildings which are such a...they are so sensitive topics that nobody dares to touch them.
I think the right thing is really to put something so contradictory to it that they stand in dialogue with each other and they don't even try to complement each other.
Because it would have been the biggest mistake to try to build something similar to the Louvre, to put a building which would copy the Louvre,
because it would just mean that we don't live in continuity, the architecture doesn't continue its history, but it would mean that architecture stands still on the level of 17th century, and that would be a lie.