Robert Bruegmann is an historian and critic of the built environment. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 and since 1979 has been at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, MIT and Columbia University. Among his books are Holabird & Roche and Holabird & Root, An Illustrated Catalogue of Work, 1991; The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago 1880-1918, 1998; Sprawl: A Compact History, 2005; The Architecture of Harry Weese, 2010, and, as editor, Modernism at Mid-Century, The Architecture of the United States Airforce Academy, 1995; and Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America, 2018. His main areas of research are in the history of architecture, urban planning, landscape and historic preservation.