Robert Bruegmann is an historian and critic of architecture, landscape, preservation, urban development and the built environment.

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He received his BA from Principia College in 1970 and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 with a dissertation on late 18th and early 19th century European hospitals and other institutions. In 1977 he became assistant professor in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he was University Distinguished Professor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning and Policy when he retired in 2009. He is currently Professor Emeritus.  He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of the Arts, MIT and Columbia University, and he has worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service.

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Robert Bruegmann is the author or editor of numerous books and articles. Among the books are Benicia: Portrait of an Early California Town, published by 101 Productions in 1980, Modernism at Mid-Century:  The Architecture of the United States Air Force Academy, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995,  The Architecture of Holabird & Roche and Holabird & Root:  An Illustrated Catalog of Work, in three volumes published by Garland Publishing Company in 1991, the award-winning volume The Architects and the City:  Holabird & Roche of Chicago 1880-1918, published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997, the controversial Sprawl:  A Compact History, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005 and, most recently, The Architecture of Harry Weese, published by W. W. Norton in 2010.  He is also a frequent lecturer, contributor to magazines and blogs and guest on radio and television shows.

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He has received scholarships and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Graham Foundation, Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and the Institute for the Humanities and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.