Why does the Hilton Hotel look different from a coaching inn - because of changes in architectural taste or changes in the hotel business? The study of building types is a history of institutions - official, social and commercial; of their changing architectural requirements; and of the way in which these requirements have been met. The building types covered here are national monuments, government buildings, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, exchanges and banks, warehouses and offices, railway stations, market halls and exhibition buildings, shops and department stores, and factories. Now available again, this winner of the Wolfson Literary Award in 1976 is an expanded version of the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts delivered at Washington in 1970. It was Pevsner's major preoccupation after the monumental Buildings of England series came to an end.