This is the thirty-third edition of the FLlW UPDATE @ FrankLloydWrightInfo.com. a supplement to the printed FLlW UPDATE, this update 31 December 2011

Where this volume may be called 'complete' is that it includes all the projects as well as the built work, everything, apparently, in the archives of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. For each item there are the drawings, reproduced in color. For each built work there are also photos, sometimes black & white, often in color.

While there are many stunning photographs, there are also some wretched ones where good ones exist and could have been had from myself and many others of my acquaintance. I know, because I offered Mr Gössel anything from my files after Julius Shulman introduced and recommended me to Benedict Taschen. All they asked for was my copy of Aaron Green's photo of the Berger (Eddie's) Dog House, S.330A..

Of course, there's lots more samples where these come from. The biggest problem with unsatisfactory photos lies with Taschen for using Juergen Nogai to make "current" photos. Too many of his photos do not show Wright as originally done, but Wright as added to by an architect other than Wright (See, for instance, William Thaxton public façade, which shows a terrible non-Wright addition to the rear of the building). Too often he seems unwilling to wait for the sun to give the needed photographic image some life. He even submits to Taschen a photo of the version of the Peterson Cottage, S.430, built for Don and Virginia Lovness as if it were the façade of the Lovness house.It is called "Garden View," tho there is no garden. There other photographers whose uninspired work is included, but shall for the nonce, remain nameless here.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion could have been done in color for the extant work, and I requested a color signature be added for the revised edition, but the financial powers at the University of Chicago Press saw no profit in a book that has sold four times what they expected and returned a profit to a not-for-profit university publisher. The added signature (32 pages) would have also allowed "The Mysterious 29" and others to be added, but space was denied me.

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It is rather sad that neither Pfeiffer nor Gössel can read the plans they published. Time and again they give their own names for projects, rather than accept what Wright stated on his drawing. They offer "Glenn and Ruth Richardson, Service Station, Automobile Dealership, Restaurant, and House." Wright called it "Garage and Restaurant." Have they no respect for the man this book is about and his choices? This is extremely sloppy and unscholarly editing.

Yet there are interesting comparisons to be made between Wright's design and what was completed. Consider S.431 Pilgrim Congregational Church. Eight full-color drawings reveal the magnificent structure Wright designed, and two color photos reveal how little was achieved in the built work. At least with this volume and The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion in hand, you can compare "as designed" with "as built."

Here, too, are projects that should have been built, and might still be, if politicians can get beyond their linear ways of thinking. Most important is "Pro Bono Publico," Wright's incredible creation for an Arizona State Capitol building.

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For the two Erdman Prefabs, S.406 - S.412, eleven buildings each with variations however minor, yet of the Prefab #1 they show only the VanTamelen S.406, Duncan S.407 and Cass S.409, this latter with an uphill view with the non-Wright basement. They show only the first of the two Prefab #2 units.

They did not include the Aaron Green's Frank Lloyd Wright Field Office, S.348. Green did a preliminary drawing and Wright took that plan, redesigned the flow of traffic completely, so the design, even as Green himself offered to me, is Wright's. But, of course, Pfeiffer has no plan, no drawings, in the archive, so he doesn't include it. What will Pfeiffer do concerning some early houses long admitted to be by Wright (for example, Chauncey Williams S.033, George W Smith, S.046), and all the River Forest houses on William Street but for which the archives have no plan?

So, what can we expect from the other two volumes? The ASBH drawings alone count nearly a thousand. Will all appear in the two remaining volumes? Or will be be cheated again, massively?

This year marks the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum, S.400. Perhaps that is why Volume 3 is published first, for it opens with one page of Florida Southern College and then provides 19 pages of the Guggenheim!!! 3 color photos of the building plus two color shots of a cutaway model of the museum. 6 B&W photos of the finished structure. 5 cartoons. 28 plans and sections in color. And so on. Stunning!

I should, of course, take umbrage at the Bibliography. Of course, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion is listed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer has said it is always on his desk, for quick answers regarding any built work. He made that volume possible by providing plans where I had no other access. But the Companion could not have been done until The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a complete catalog was done, back in 1974. Yet it is not listed. Instead, Tom Heinz's Field Guide is listed, tho it is replete with errors, such as mispelling a client's name. Also, Heinz needed my Catalog to do his Field Guide! His book is a field guide, but there are no overarching maps connecting the items within a regional group, as the Catalog has. Further, Heinz uses accession numbers (Taliesin file numbers) as if they were cataog numbers, even tho that requires a chronological ordering from 0 (digital) or 1 (analog) to whatever (519 building units are listed in my Catalog, but variations of a unit make this 433 catalog numbers ). Who taught Heinz to do such a stupid thing? Why doesn't Heinz understand academic procedures?

Sadly, these three volumes should have, and could have, been "definitive." That a publisher with the resources and reputation of Taschen should have fallen so far short of that goal is distressing.