Architectural historian and professor. He received his doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1958, working with Nikolaus Pevsner. His influential dissertation entitled Theory and Design in the First Machine Age was published in 1960 and argued that the functionalism of the modern movement was an aesthetic stance as much as a desire to satisfy the purpose of any given building. While at the Courtauld, Banham helped found the Independent Group, drawn from artists, architects and critics who wanted to debate the received tenants of modernism. Banham worked for The Architectural Review and taught at University College in London (1964-1976), the State University at Buffalo (1976-1980) and the University of California at Santa Cruz (1980-1988). Other books include Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies, The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment and A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, 1900-1925.