问答题 Room 101, the infamous "torture chamber" in George Orwell"s novel 1984, is to be preserved as a work of art by the BBC. Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, worked for the BBC"s Eastern Service during the second world war. He later described his time there as "futile" and likened the BBC to "a mixture of a whorehouse and a lunatic asylum".
Room 101 of Broadcasting House, thought to have held bad memories for Orwell, featured in 1984 as the place where disloyal citizens face their innermost fears. "The thing that is in room 101 is the worst thing in the world," Orwell"s hero, Winston Smith, is told by his interrogator as a cage full of hungry rats is placed over his head. "When I press this ... lever the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets ... They will leap onto your face and bore straight through it."
Room 101, at the end of a first-floor corridor in Broadcasting House, is due to be demolished in the summer as part of a massive refurbishment. The BBC has asked Rachel Whiteread, who is best known for producing casts of objects such as the unused fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, to tackle the room, which is now packed with pipes, shafts and boilers. "I"ve been to see it," said Whiteread last week. "I"d like to do something. "
The BBC plans to display Whiteread"s replica of room 101 in one of several new public spaces in the new-look Broadcasting House. It has already begun to gut the inside of the building as part of a ￡400m plan to turn it into a huge radio and television newsroom, and a new home for the BBC World Service. About ￡5m has been set aside by John Smith, the BBC"s finance director, to spend on art and design. Alan Yentob, coordinator of the public art project, said. "We"ve been scandalous over the past 40 years in not concerning ourselves with art and design in our own buildings."
Other leading artists, designers and photographers including Anish Kapoor, Fiona Rae, Cornelia Parker, Nick Danziger, and Richard Wentworth have agreed to produce work for the art scheme, although the replica of room 101 is likely to cause most interest. "It sounds fun, all the more so because Orwell hated the BBC," said his biographer Sir Bernard Crick.
This June is the 100th anniversary of Orwell"s birth in India. Once in England, the former public-school boy and policeman took up left-wing causes and wrote books such as Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London. However, some experts ask if the BBC has got the right room. "Room 101 was at another BBC building—55 Portland Place," said Peter Davison, who has published two volumes of Orwell"s works, letters and documents. "Portland Place is where they held meetings of the Eastern Service and that, I"m sure, is how he came to name the room in 1984." Whatever the truth of room 101, the BBC plans to continue with Whiteread"s cast replica, not least because of the intriguing shapes of its pipes and tubes.
The BBC has made other uses of Orwell"s room 101. Its name is the title of the television programme in which the comedian Paul Merton asks guests to identify and destroy their pet hates. The Broadcasting House refurbishment is due to be completed in 2006. When it was built 70 years ago, the building, with its many art deco touches, was hailed as a masterpiece of design. Two Eric Gill sculptures—one of Prospero and Ariel outside and another in the foyer—will be kept because they, like the BBC"s Council Chamber, are listed. The public art project will begin in May, with temporary works on the scaffolding and tarpaulin outside Broadcasting House. The permanent works will not be ready until 2006. "I"ll be working on some big space project to go inside," said Kapoor, whose enormous trumpet-like Marsyas sculpture is at Tate Modern. Parker, whose reworking of Rodin"s The Kiss is at Tate Britain, plans a work based on sound or pictures.

问答题 Tell briefly what you know about room 101 and the novelist George Orwell.

问答题 What does BBC plan to do in order to preserve room 101 as a work of art?

问答题 What do we learn from the passage about the controversial issue of the location of room 101?