Robert Harbison

Robert Harbison taught architectural history for more than 30 years, mainly at the Architectural Association and London Metropolitan University. He became a legendary figure for generations of students and his books earned him an international reputation as a historian and critic. Born in Baltimore, Bob first studied English literature and completed his doctoral thesis on the 19th century English industrial novel at Cornell University in 1969. After moving to London in 1974 he published his first architecture book, Eccentric Spaces, which applied a poetic sensibility to topics as diverse as gardens, maps, machines and ideal cities. It was Bernard Tschumi who, having read the book, invited Bob to lecture at the AA and thereby launched his teaching career.

Eccentric Spaces has become a classic but more architecture books followed, including Ruins and Fragments, Reflections on Baroque and The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable. Bob’s early books benefited from the fact that his wife Esther was an editor. Thirteen Ways, first published in 1997, is typically unconventional. It borrows its title from a Wallace Stevens poem but refuses the obvious implication, consisting of only ten chapters. Bob was a voracious reader and his learning was profound but it was always the direct encounter with works of art and architecture that ignited his passion. He very rarely wrote about buildings he had not seen. His 2009 book Travels in the History of Architecture is in one sense a traditional ‘survey’ with conventional chapter headings: Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and so on. But it is also, as its title suggests, a travelogue, the written record of a purposeful exploration of the world’s architecture over several decades.