You're probably too young to remember what life was like before 'sliced bread' was invented, and we had to make do with regular 'bread'. Those were dark days. Sandwiches took weeks to construct, sometimes even months. Bread had to be eaten in miserable clumps, wet from all the tears rolling down your dough-covered cheeks. Bakers were hated by all, and rightly so.
你或许还很小，没有见识过切片面包诞生之前的日子。那时候我们不得不靠普通的面包度日。那日子可真的是昏天黑地啊，三明治可能要花上几个星期甚至是几个月才能完全整好，我们不得不一坨一坨的往嘴里塞面包，因为眼泪止不住的流，打湿了面包。每个人都讨厌面包师，这理所当然。

Then one day, everything changed. Someone invented 'slicing', mixed it with the invention of 'bread', and created sliced bread! An idea so amazing every future idea would be judged against it.
然后，忽然有那么一天，世界改变了！有人发明了切片的概念，然后把它赋予给了面包！然后切片面包就诞生了！如此惊世骇俗的点子，以至于后无来者！

Point is, sometimes it takes the combination of two great ideas to finish a wonderful one. Like the skyscraper! Tall buildings had been around for ages, but it was the invention of the elevator in the 19th century that took them to truly awesome heights. Thanks to the ol' uppity-box, we can't get enough of scraping the sky with our industrial might. Indeed, the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is over two thousand and seven hundred feet tall! What better way to celebrate such architectural awesomeness than building a skyscraper in Minecraft?
关键的一点在于，有时候需要两个伟大的点子相结合才能诞生一个绝妙的点子。打个比方说，摩天大楼！高层楼房已经面世很久，但是直到19世纪电梯的发明才使它们的高度突破天际。多亏了电梯这个自大的盒子，我们不满足于现状，不断以我们的工业水平挑战浩瀚星宇。实际上，世界上最高的摩天大楼，迪拜的Burj Khalifa，有足足两千七百多英尺高！有什么更好的方式比得上在我的世界里建造摩天大楼以对这样的建筑奇迹表示庆贺呢？

Well, ace builder Ryer actually came up with a better way – by combining the ideas of 'skycrapers' and 'weeks', and sharing a new, stunning skyscraper build every day for seven days as part of his own Skyscraper week!
而雷尔，一位王牌建筑师，想到了一个更好的方式——将摩天大楼与星期的概念相结合。每天展示一栋全新又夺人眼球的摩天大楼，这就是他的摩天大楼周活动！

“Quite a long time ago, I had seen a video on YouTube of someone who had done a small recreation of the Shimizu Megacity Pyramid,” explains Ryer to us, when we ask how he discovered Minecraft. “Back in those days, I had never seen something like that in a game, and I wanted to do something similar.
当我们问起雷尔是如何入坑我的世界的，他和我们解释道：“很久以前我在网上刷视频的时候，我看到有人对清水金字塔做了一个小小的微原创。我那时从来没有在游戏里见过这样的东西，我也想做。”

“So I bought the game and started making things. Those early projects started out small and I can’t for the life of me remember what they were. All I knew was that I wanted to make something like that eventually. I ended up starting to make skyscrapers, and I found them really fun to build, so I kept doing it.”
“所以我买了这个游戏，然后开始试着做点什么，一开始的工作计划规模都很小，我其实已经记不清我建了什么了。我只记得的是我想要做出类似那样的东西，我最后开始建造摩天大楼，而我发现这超有趣的，于是我就坚持了下来。”

Just putting together one steel monolith of a skyscraper would be enough for most people. What possessed Ryer to shoot for an entire weeks worth of towering builds? “Skyscraper week is an old idea of mine, dating probably all the way back to the middle of 2015. I was never able to create enough towers to do it until recently however. I had joined, and now co-own a server called Architects MC and most of these skyscrapers came from a city we are making on there called Clermont .”
对于很多人来说，把一座摩天楼的钢骨架拼完就已经很可以了。是什么在推动雷尔花了足足一整周的时间在这些高耸的大楼上面呢？“摩天大楼周是我一个旧时的点子，大概是在2015年的中间吧。但是直到现在我才能建造出这么多的大楼使其成为现实。我加入了一个叫做Architects MC的服务器，现在和别人共同在一起运营。这些摩天大楼大多来自于我们在服务器里建造的一座名叫克莱门特的城市。”

“After a little while I had a large number of completed Skyscrapers, and I decided that this would be the time to do Skyscraper Week. It wasn’t too much of a challenge to keep up with the daily upload schedule, considering everything was completed beforehand.”
“过了一段时间，我已经建成了大量的摩天大楼。我想是时候整一下摩天大楼周的事情了。跟上我定下的每日上传计划表并不难，因为大部分事情已经提前搞好了。”

But although adhering to a strict schedule kept the week relatively hassle free, it still wasn't without it's time-sucking challenges. “Rendering was incredibly tedious and long. I had seven skyscrapers, and originally I wanted to do seven renders for each one of them, then a few more for other promotional stuff. I ended up cutting back to only five renders per project, but each one took about two hours nonetheless.
“但是，尽管遵循时间表推进可以使得这周过的没有那么匆忙，但是这并不代表这不花时间。“渲染的过程非常的乏味且冗长。我有总共七座摩天大楼，一开始我想要给每座大楼做七份渲染，然后再给一些宣传用资料做一下渲染，但到最后我只能将计划削减为每座大楼五份渲染，这每份渲染要花上我大概两个小时的时间。”

'By the end of it I had rendered for almost 100 hours over the course of two weekends. That was a bit of a challenge.” As overpaid oafs who have to constantly resize and reupload images to make this site look pretty, we feel your pain, Ryer.
“到最后，我在两个周末内渲染了足足近一百多个小时。这还蛮有挑战的。”平时写博文的时候，我们为了使文章的观感更加好看，我们不得不频繁的剪切图片并重新上传，我们和你感同身受，雷尔。

Ryer describes Clermont, the city he's building on the Architects MC Server as a place with a “very San Franciscan vibe”, and real-world structures are a big influence on his work, with both 181 Fremont and the Salesforce Tower being replicas of the San Fransisco skyscrapers.
雷尔将他在他们建筑服务器里建造的克莱门特城描述成一种很像是旧金山的城市。现实中的建筑给他的建筑风格造成了很大的影响。比如说弗里蒙特181号与苍鹭塔都是旧金山真实存在的摩天大楼的复制品。

'By the end of it I had rendered for almost 100 hours over the course of two weekends.'
“到最后，我在两个周末内渲染了足足近一百多个小时。”

“Lots of the skyscrapers that aren’t a direct replica do have inspiration rooted in some real building somewhere,” explains Ryer. “For my M-Tower I had looked to the monolithic, massive nature of theGoldin Finance 117 tower in Tianjin, China.
“有很多并非直接复制自现实的摩天大楼，它们的灵感也确实来自于现实的摩天大楼。”雷尔解释道，“比如说我的M楼，我就去考察过中国天津那大到自然的高银金融117大厦。”

“I loved how that skyscraper seemed so dominating, and had such a simple form. Some other buildings I make just come straight out of my head, with little inspiration rooted in real life.”
“我喜欢那座大楼，它很有独创性，外形简单。还有一些建筑真的就是我大脑里突然蹦出来的，没有参考现实生活。”

Ryer's advice for aspiring builders? “Build whatever you want, try different things. If you find that you like doing something in particular, practice that style. The best way to get better at something is to do it. Start small, as large projects early on kill motivation. Do something unique, though this is probably a little bit hypocritical for me to say... I have created almost 40 skyscrapers.
雷尔有给那些充满抱负的建筑师什么建议吗？“建你想建的建筑，尝试不同的东西，如果你发现你对这个东西非常爱不释手，那就就试着去练习它。最好的方式永远是行动。万事始于细微处，因为大项目会一点点磨干你的动力。做些独特的东西，虽然我说这话就有点讽刺了……我已经造了40多座摩天楼了。”

“People love new things, and it is always fun to go into territory that has never been explored. The most important thing is to never give up. If you complete something, and it doesn’t look exactly how you would have liked it, see if you can figure out why. On your next endeavour, be conscious about what you liked, and what you didn’t like on that last build. Make something new with that information in mind. Minecraft gives you the opportunity to do whatever you want, so do whatever you want.”
“人们喜欢新鲜事物，踏入一个从未被探寻的领域总是乐趣无穷。重点是不要放弃。如果你的成果并不符合你的心意，试着去找出原因，然后下一次尝试的时候记得你喜欢什么，不喜欢什么。记住这些，然后去开拓畅想。我的世界给了你施展的空间，所以信手施为吧。”

For more of Ryer's ace builds, take a look at his Planet Minecraft page, follow him on Twitter and find his server, Architects MC,here . Is it the best thing since sliced bread? ACTUALLY IT'S BETTER.
想了解更多关于雷尔的绝妙建筑吗？那就去看看他的个人页面吧，你也可以关注他的社交账号，也可以去他的建筑服逛逛。这比之切片面包如何？实际上这更棒了。

【我 译自官网 2017 年 06 月 21 日发布的 Touch the Sky；原作者 Tom Stone】
【本文排版借助了：SPX】

A week of skyscraper builds 应该是一周都在建（看文章应该是不止一座）摩天楼

大楼加上光影真是太有那味了