40 quotes
Dormers may easily lose, in winter, the credit they gained in summer. ...If, however, they are properly made and securely closed in cold weather, this will not happen.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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...
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
New York ought to have such an avenue like the Champs Elysées of Paris, Unter den Linden of Berlin, or the Ring Strasse of Vienna, but more ample than any of them; for here, of all places, owing to the shape of the island, there is the most need of such a thing.
Style... the very hall-mark of great art... there is little use in trying to define style.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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?
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
In the human form, as nature tries to make it, every feature is useful and every feature is beautiful. Each member is perfectly adapted to the function it has to perform; nothing is superfluous, yet the whole and every part is supremely decorative.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Disadvantages... can be entirely removed by... the ridge-dormer. By its use space in the roof, otherwise of little value, becomes the most desirable.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Variety. ...Movement, contrast, and accent all contribute to variety... the spice of life... Monotony and dryness are lurking enemies which may be vanquished by variety.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Why can there not be a new art founded on the only principle which can produce great art—the principle that art is the interpretation or extraction of the essence of beauty in nature, and all else is secondary?
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
When, in architecture, one uses a fixed unit and combinations of it, to produce harmony, the effect should be most striking and apparent... as it is in music by the measured beat and in poetry by the cadence and rhythm.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
One of the most ancient and inexpensive ways of obtaining shelter, was to utilize the space under sloping roof rafters. Indian wigwams have no other kind. Where civilization is slightly more advanced, low stone walls are built upon which the feet of the rafters rest.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
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.
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)