Ernest Flagg - Design Quotes

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

Ernest Flagg
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.

Ernest Flagg
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
Interest.... a design to be great must have great interest.... the most potent of all ways to impart interest is to endow the design with beauty of form, and... the one which makes the strongest appeal to human interest and admiration is physical beauty in human shape.

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

Ernest Flagg
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
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...

Ernest Flagg
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
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
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.

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

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

Ernest Flagg
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
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.

Ernest Flagg
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.

Ernest Flagg
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