Robin studied at Nottingham University, England, and at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London (AA). While at the AA he served on Forum, its governing body, and sat on its working party to investigate alternative organisational structures for the school. Before university he travelled in Europe and lived in Paris. After taking his degree he lived and travelled in Columbia, South America. He now divides his time between Lappeenranta, Finland, and London, England. After leaving college in 1977 he set up a joinery business and began working on construction sites as a foreman/carpenter. Robin set up Dovetail Building Design in 1982 to take projects from the drawing board to completion. Later the practice provided architectural services to developers and contractors. Robin studied computer programming and systems analysis at Birkbeck College. He designed and wrote software for his companies both for telephone marketing and to deal with invoicing and tax. In 1987 he was invited to to be partner in charge of business and marketing at a start-up computer consultancy company. In 1989 he was employed to trouble-shoot a variety of problems in human resource management, information control, design management and project management at Scott Brownrigg & Turner, and at Chapman Taylor Partners. While there, he was responsible for negotiations with senior management at large enterprises such as Capital & Counties plc, Granada plc, and Marks and Spencer. In 1996 he was asked to develop project management systems for Greenwich Council, London. He went on to provide strategic programme development services on a wide variety of programmes before being head hunted to work for Cyril Sweett Ltd in 1998.