Robert E Somol Jr is an architectural theorist and Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

He was a professor in the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University, and taught design and theory at Princeton University, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rice University, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

He holds an AB from Brown University (1982), a JD from Harvard Law School, and a PhD in the history of culture from the University of Chicago (1997).

Robert Somol presented the paper “Indifferent Urbanism: Graphic Standards and Urban Norms” at the 2nd Holcim Forum, Urban Trans_Formation in Shanghai (2007) and was a member of the Holcim Awards jury for North America in 2005.