The Wright reference tools on CD-ROM by Ingrid Bush, CD-ROM Today , p. 84, July 1996.

Frank Lloyd Wright is arguably America's most famous architect. Two new discs about Wright's buildings, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, and The Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright provide valuable reference tools about this prolific and highly innovative designer's work.

Both discs span Wright's career from 1889 to 1959, documenting existing and demolished projects, and covering his work in the United States and overseas. What distinguishes Companion from Houses is the scope of its coverage. The latter focuses on 80 of Wright's residential projects, while Companion documents every Wright building, including such obscure commissions as the doghouse he designed in 1956 for a client's son.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion is based on the book of the same name by architectural historian William Allin Storrer. Each entry is accompanied by photographs and plans. Unfortunately the disc lacks the beautiful watercolored renderings produced by Wright's staff; elevations and sections are rarely included; and documentation of architectural details is meager. But maps are provided to help locate Wright's buildings.

The main menu is divided into seven chronological sections with several browsing options. The text accompanying each building is thorough and well written. Storrer sets each project in its particular context, providing details about the client, time and place of building, and changes made to the structure over time.

Storrer's exhaustive research (the book was a 25-year project) is evident, but the multimedia version doesn't do the book justice. The graphic interface is easy to navigate but isn't visually enticing, and the zoom feature is limited. The disc contains video of Wright's better-known buildings such as the Ennis-Brown house and Fallingwater, but the grainy video and 3D virtual walkthroughs add little to the disc's multimedia content.

If this disc was more interactive it would have been the definitive Wright CD-ROM. As it stands, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion is a great book on CD-ROM, rather than a great CD-ROM.

One disc's weaknesses are the other's strengths. Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright provides a profusion of Wright's renderings and presentation drawings, construction details, elevations and working drawings. And with more than 1,000 illustrations, there's more visual material than the Companion. Houses emphasizes the illustrations rather than the text, which is too brief.

The renderings are true in color and tone to the originate plus you can adjust brightness and contrast. There's information about each drawing's purpose and medium in which it was executed, and a handy Thumbnail Image Display lets you view, illustrations for a project. You can also zoom, maximize or minimize, and crop each screen.

The interface for Houses is not as intuitive as Companion's. A Details Index covering such subjects as fireplaces, furniture, and lighting is provided, but it isn't exhaustive. Plus, there are no video clips or 3D walk-throughs.

Neither disc is highly interactive. For the price, Companion is a more thorough catalogue and provides a better introduction to the work of this master architect. On the other hand, the beautiful renderings in Houses are enticing.

RATING for The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion: 4 Discs (out of maximum of 5)
- "The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion; Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Wright reference tools on CD-ROM", by Ingrid Bush, CD-ROM Today , p. 84, July 1996.

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