Ernest Flagg: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Unity…. Unity of purpose is shown by continuity, or the proper relationship of the parts with each other, and with the whole as one sees it best expressed in the human form. Unity of mass is obtained by giving predominance of mass to some one feature…”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Parting

“4th. Savings in labor: (a) By the lowness of the walls… (b) in the use of unskilled labor in building walls, by backing the face stones with concrete, and placing the face stones in the forms dry without the use of mortar, except for pointing… (c) in the simplification of woodwork, especially in the hanging of windows and doors, and in the setting of trim… (d) in the application of hardware, chiefly on account of the kind of hinges used… (e) in the standardization of parts and the use of similar members… (f) by cutting about one-half the labor in the installation of plumbing drainage… and (g) by the greater use of machine and shop work, which the exposed structural members permit of.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Parting

“2d. Saving space: (a) By the utilization of the large volume of space contained in the slopes of roofs… (b) by the reduction of floor thickness… (c) by the utilization of space (as on shipboard) for lockers, cupboards, closets, etc… (d) by the use of thin partitions… and (e) by elimination of corridors… so that the least possible area may be required for communication.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Communication

“In the human figure as it approaches perfection… is contained the sure guide for the determination of all true principles of design. …it was because the ancient Greeks… realized this truth that they excelled all others in art.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Truth , Art , Perfection

“To the Greek harmony was of supreme importance, and if the triglyphs represented the harmonic scale… their meaning and use is abundantly explained. …The universal admiration which Greek proportions have always excited proves that the method of obtaining them was correct.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Universe

“The object of this work is to improve the design and construction of small houses while reducing their cost.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Housing

“How few people, even among the supposedly well educated, can give an intelligent explanation of the qualities of a design! …the essential ones …are necessary in order that the design may be worthy to be classed at all as a work of art. Among the essential qualities are reason, unity, harmony, clarity, and variety. Among the desirable qualities are imagination, interest, refinement, simplicity, dignity, and style.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

People , Education , Art , Imagination

“Many women do not like to sleep on the ground floor, being afraid to leave their windows open at night. With ridge-dormers standing open, the lower windows may be kept closed and locked, while the room will be perfectly ventilated without them.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Women , Sleep , Night

“It is hard to change long-established building habits; such habits sometimes endure for ages in certain localities with little or no change. It is, however, easy for new communities to acquire bad building habits.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Age , Communication , Change

“Certain combinations of dimensions produce harmonious results, but since the time of the ancient Greeks no system of design, consistently base on that knowledge, has been formulated.”

Ernest Flagg

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

Knowledge , Time

“When the necessity for shelter is great and the means for obtaining it scant, flimsy and makeshift methods of building find ready acceptance; and once introduced are hard to eradicate. Such habits, formed here in early times, still influence construction; as abundantly proved by our inordinate fire loss…”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Loss , Time

“Style… the very hall-mark of great art… there is little use in trying to define style.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art

“The most economical way of obtaining good results is to apply the great, fundamental principles of art; and depend on them for beauty, rather than upon the use of either applied ornament or more expensive materials… much better results are likely to accrue from truth than falsehood, and from architectural [rather] than archaeological methods.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Truth , Beauty , Art , Way

“Refinement. While the possession of this quality is due, in the first instance, to education, it is also largely a matter of temperament.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Education

“A Greek architect of the great epoch would no more have thought of omitting the mark of the harmonic scale of proportion, on which the design was based, than would the composer of music think of omitting the harmonic scale of his composition.”

Ernest Flagg

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

Music , Thinking

“The Greeks were men of sense; if they used the system they did so for a purpose, as artists rather than mathematicians and imperceptible irregularities could not affect that purpose.”

Ernest Flagg

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

Men , Sense

“For more than two thousand years architectural design by the use of a modulus, except in the case of the classic orders, had been a lost art.”

Ernest Flagg

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

Art

“From time to time a square has been opened here, a park there, a street cut through in one place or widened in another, but these improvements have been entirely local in their effect, and have failed to change the general appearance of the city. Even the greatest of all these changes, the laying out of Central Park, was unfortunate, to say the least, for it serves to aggravate one of the worst features of the original plan, viz., the failure to provide a central artery of communication worthy of the coming city.”

Ernest Flagg

"The Plan of New York, and How to Improve It," Scribner's Magazine (August, 1904) 36

Communication , Failure , Appearance , Change

“We here have… an architectural discovery which may prove of inestimable value to future art. …Like fire, it is a good servant but a bad master. The danger is that it may lead to a cramped and mechanical design. One may easily become a slave to the module, and do things because of it which his taste or reason would not otherwise commend. …How can the danger be avoided and the benefits secured?”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art , Future

“When the true principles of design are forgotten; when, in art, the bizarre and novel is the aim rather than the beautiful; when complication and mystery take the place of what should be as simple and clear as the atmosphere, design runs amuck, and becomes so helplessly involved in difficulties that such manifestations as cubism, impressionism, futurism, and art nouveau shoe their ugly heads and pose as art.”

Ernest Flagg

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Beauty , Art , Shoe , Future