Robin Gerard Penleigh Boyd CBE (3 January 1919 – 16 October 1971) was an Australian architect, writer, teacher and social commentator.

During his wife's absence Penleigh had a brief affair with another woman but shortly before his family returned from England he bought back 'The Robins' and purchased a new car.

A few days later, for reasons unknown, Penleigh left Melbourne to drive to Sydney in the company of another person, but he lost control of the vehicle on a sharp bend near Warragul and it overturned.

Edith bought a modest house in East Malvern in 1927, when Robin was enrolled at the nearby Lloyd Street State School.

He had evidently decided quite early on architecture as his chosen career so his mother arranged for him to be articled to leading Melbourne architect Kingsley Henderson.

Boyd was equally prolific and influential as a writer, commentator, educator and public speaker, vehemently supporting modernism in his The Australian Ugliness (1960) with a condemnation of visual pollution and vulgar 'featurism'.

He was also lecturer in architecture at the University of Melbourne, and in 1956-57 he took up a teaching position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston offered by Walter Gropius, a friend of Boyd's and a director at MIT.

In 1958 Boyd wrote the liner notes for satirist Barry Humphries' first commercial recording, a 7-inch EP, Wild Life in Suburbia (1958).

In early July his condition worsened and he was admitted to St Andrew's Hospital (now the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) in Melbourne; he was diagnosed with interstitial pneumonia, told that the infection had settled in one of his heart valves and administered massive six-hourly doses of ampicillin.

He recovered somewhat and struggled on through August–September, maintaining his usual heavy work schedule, but in early October his condition deteriorated again and he was admitted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

He suffered a stroke while recovering from the operation, and although he briefly rallied enough to recognise his wife Patricia, he died three days later on 16 October 1971, aged 52.

"[12] A special issue of the RMIT Design Archives Journal was produced to mark these two anniversaries entitled: Robin Boyd Redux.