Town Design by Frederick Gibberd

Town Design by Frederick Gibberd is offered here in the fifth edition, revised and enlarged, published by The Architectural Press, London, in 1967.

It was printed in Great Britain by W. S. Cowell Ltd of Ipswich. It is a large-format hardcover, bound in olive-green cloth with gilt titling and rules on the spine.

The copyright page sets out the publishing history of Town Design across five editions: the first in 1953, a revised second edition in 1955, and revised and enlarged third, fourth and fifth editions in 1959, 1962 and 1967.

Each new edition added to the work, and this fifth edition is the latest recorded in the book’s own printing history.

Repeated revision over fourteen years points to a book that stayed in steady use by its readers. Town Design remains of interest today as a record of how towns, streets and public spaces were thought about in the post-war decades.

Its generous page size and substantial thickness make it a weighty volume to have on the shelf.

Town Design will appeal to architects, town planners and urban designers, to students of architecture and the built environment, and to collectors of mid-twentieth-century architectural books.

It would sit equally well in a professional practice library or a private collection on planning history.

Condition – Good

Original olive-green cloth, without dust jacket. The boards are clean and square with light general wear, and the corners are lightly bumped and rubbed.

The gilt spine lettering remains bright and legible; the head of the spine is chipped and frayed with a small loss of cloth, and the tail shows light rubbing.

Page edges are clean with light toning. Light foxing to the front pastedown and front free endpaper, which carries a previous owner’s ink name and date (1969).

The text block of this copy of Town Design sits square in the binding.