Ernest Flagg Quotes

Instead of the dormers, skylights... are easier to make and operate, need no double sash, cost less, and some may prefer their appearance.

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.

With dignity and simplicity come repose... the natural state of one at home in his surroundings and sure of his ground. Repose is a distinguished characteristic of Greek art.

One of the best ways to economize in building is to economize on ugliness. ...Nothing can be greater service in avoiding ugliness than a knowledge of the principles of design.

Harmony. ...it is all embracing and should reign throughout—harmony in purpose, harmony in dimensions, harmony in form and harmony in color. In good design discord can have no place. ...all may unite to form a complete, harmonious, and well-rounded composition ...

Unless he is prepared to try his new theories and processes on himself, as has been done here, there is little likelihood that he will ever see them applied, for he will find that, of all people, builders are most set in their ways and hardest to move from their accustomed ruts.

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.

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

Imagination... implies originality. It results in a reflection... of the working mind of the designer. ...Imagination may be called the dynamic force in art. ...It is the quality which distinguishes the artistic from the photographic representation of nature.

It was only within comparatively recent times that several refinements in Greek architecture... such as the slight entasis of the columns, the greater size of the corner columns, and the convex curve of the stylobate were discovered.

Low walls are much less expensive to build than high ones... it is possible to use forms without the usual waste of lumber... when waste is avoided, forms greatly reduce the cost of stonework... much can be saved in the construction of foundations by methods described...

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.

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.

The Parthenon stands as a reproach to the rest of the world. May not this be because the rest of the world has forgotten, or never knew, the principles which made the Parthenon possible and of which harmony of proportion... was one?

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.