Ernest Flagg: Designation

Ernest Flagg was American architect. Explore interesting quotes on designation.
Ernest Flagg: 130   quotes 0   likes

“Greek art was extremely simple and direct; both in design and construction the Greek mind abhorred complicaton.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art

“There have always seemed to the writer sound reasons for using the module system in architectural design.”

Ernest Flagg

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

“If the chief rules of good design were understood by the masses”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: If the chief rules of good design were understood by the masses as they might be, nothing would do more to promote beauty, improve workmanship, add to the value of manufactures, and in many other ways further the general welfare and prosperity of the country. They are simple, easy to acquire, and should be taught with the alphabet.<!--Ch. XI

“When one understands the principles of design”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: When one understands the principles of design, his taste will have something more solid as a basis than mere whim or fancy, which in the untutored is more likely to be bad than good. Acquainted with the rules of good design he will not accept articles made in defiance of them.

Understanding

“While it is not hard to suggest improvements on common methods of design and construction, it is very hard to introduce them.”

Ernest Flagg

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

“Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: Reason... to suppose any production, worthy to be called a work of art, can be made without its use is foolish.... By the use of reason many mistakes in design may be avoided and many counterfeits of art readily detected.... Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art.

Beauty , Art , Sense

“The Greeks designed by a modulus of fixed measure”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: The Greeks designed by a modulus of fixed measure, and that modulus, for the Doric order, was the distance between centers of the triglyphs.... The triglyphs stand in the frieze, at the corners of the building and at regular intervals at all sides of it; between then are panels, called metopæ, which are always square. The distance between the triglyphs, therefore, determines the height of the frieze. The height of the frieze determines that of the architrave, which is the same. The distance between the triglyphs also determines the spacing of the columns, for except at the corners of the building the center of each column coincides with that of every second triglyph. Upon the spacing of the triglyphs, therefore, depend absolutely the proportions of plan and order. That spacing constitutes a fixed modulus for the entire design which never varies in its application and is, in fact, the harmonic scale of the monument.<!--Ch. II

“Clarity or Decision. …without it there is uncertainty, hesitation, obscurity, instability… incomparable with good art. The meaning and object of the design should be clear… it should be frank, as the French say.”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: Clarity or Decision.... without it there is uncertainty, hesitation, obscurity, instability... incomparable with good art. The meaning and object of the design should be clear... it should be frank, as the French say.

Art , Decision

“The most perfectly constructed object in nature, and also the most beautiful object in nature, is the human form as it approaches perfection. This, then, is the criterion of construction as it is of design. The study of its beauties is the veritable key to art…”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Beauty , Art , Nature , Study

“It is clearly apparent that in building the best results should accrue in proportion as every element in the structure is fitted both to the function it has to perform and the materials of which it is made. It follows from this that disguise and complication are hindrances, both to good construction and good design, and as complication and disguise are expensive and wasteful, that the interests of good art and true economy run on parallel lines.”

Ernest Flagg

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

Art

“The chief difficulty in designing small houses is to avoid an excessive appearance of height. …the ridge-dormer or its equivalent, the ridge skylight, would open a whole new field of opportunity…”

Ernest Flagg

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Appearance , Housing

“As in poetry and music, even the unskilled ear may be offended by a mistake in measure, without discerning the cause, may not also a mistake in the harmony of dimensions unconsciously offend us in design?”

Ernest Flagg

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

Music

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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