Students, professor collaborate on e-book about Frank Lloyd Wright

A student-written non-linear e-book about the life and work of Wisconsin-born architect Frank Lloyd Wright can be accessed here.

The e-book came about through a Ripon College fall semester class, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Master Architect, Artist and Thinker,” taught by Travis Nygard, assistant professor of art, chair of the department and registrar of the College art collection.

The class looked broadly at the life and work of Wright. Nygard and some of the students enrolled in the class developed with e-book together. “As the instructor, I chose some of the project parameters, but the students were actively involved in deciding what the final product would be,” Nygard says.

A non-linear e-book lets the person reading to choose a “path” to follow. There is no beginning, middle and end, but rather the readers are led to the material that is most interesting to them.

The e-book was written using Scalar, a website creation platform that allows anyone to easily create e-books. It allows people to publish their work with the help of images, videos and all the advantages of digital technologies. “One thing that is particularly exciting about this platform is that it interfaces with repositories of information like the Internet Archive, such that you can embed multimedia content in the e-book,” Nygard says.

One of the student authors, Myat Aung ’16 of Yangon, Myanmar, says, “I’ve always been a huge fan of Wright, but after taking this class I understood more about his life and his work, especially what kind of person he was and how he created his architectural marvels.”

Other students working on the project were Andie Winters ’18 of Lodi, Wisconsin; and Haley Anderson ’19 of Pine River, Wisconsin.

The purpose of the e-book was to help the students appreciate the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and also enable them to share their ideas and appreciation of the architect’s work with a wider audience.

Mra Than ’17
New York, New York

Posted April 7, 2016 in Faculty, Research, Student.

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