Wofle, Ivor de (ed) (pseudonym)
Civilia. The end of suburban man a challenge to semidetsia.
London, Architectural Press 1971.
Full Description
4to. 156pp, incl 159 photo ills, also plans. Publisher’s cloth, in dustwrapper. No ownership inscription but Gavin Stamp’s copy.
First and only edition in book form. It presents a typically idiosyncratic scheme by the Architectural Press’s proprietor, H. de Cronyn Hastings, the pseudonymous “Ivor de Wofle”, for the construction of a new city, “Civilia”, on the Warwickshire-Leicestershire border just north of Nuneaton. The city’s emphatically lakeside setting stems from Hastings’s own long-standing interest in sailing and inland waterways, but the arrangement of the city’s buildings in decks on many levels gives it something of the feel of the cities of contemporary science fiction, and it is an interesting addition to the literature of British town planning. Scarce in the book trade today.