About

I worked in an office after leaving school but soon realised I needed to find a job which involved at least one of my interests. After a few false starts I went to architecture school – and buildings became my new passion. I enjoyed the research part of my architecture course too, writing my dissertation on mobile buildings, a topic I was eventually to return to. I was in architectural practice for ten years until, quite by chance, I started teaching, loved it and eventually enjoyed a career where I ended up a university professor at a leading school of architecture in the UK. 

Research and writing have always been a creative urge for me. I am fascinated by innovative forms of design that are inspired by technological and cultural pressures and have written more than a dozen books on portable, mobile, flexible, and adaptable architecture. I was one of the first to recognise it as a distinct and valid form of architectural design, but as the field attracted more and more designers and new researchers, I turned to a second passion: live music. The bands I have seen and the music venues I have visited would take another book, so, recognising how important live music had been in my own life, I started to write about how the places in which we experience live music influences the music, musicians, audiences and the cities in which they exist.

As well as books, my writing has appeared in the Architect’s Journal, RIBA Journal, Architectural Design, Building Design and 2wice and my research has led to me being asked to speak at the V&A London, Guggenheim Lab, Berlin, Vitra Design Museum, Germany, Harvard University, UCLA, University of Santa Barbara, University of Delft, University of Graz, Milan Polytechnic, University of Malaya, Kyoto University.

Robert Kaye

… is my fiction pen name. Studying English literature in high school set me off on a life-long love of books and the James Bond ‘failure’ didn’t stop me trying again, writing short stories for fun and family throughout my adult life. It took a long time for me to attempt something longer, though like many frustrated novelists I regularly scratched down ideas in my notebook. I wrote a complete, very long novel a few years ago, but re-reading it in lock-down with a view to editing it into some form of reality, I realised it would be better to start again. Oh well…. 

The Shadow House became my lock-down project. It was also a NaNoWriMo project, the first draft of about 60,000 words completed in 30 days. Learning the ins and outs of self-publishing was a whole new journey as well. After the exultation of completing a whole novel, the real work started (which would take three years off and on) with draft after draft recycled into the version that is now out in the world. I owe a big thank you to my friends and relatives who proved to be excellent critics. Hopefully, readers will connect with Joe and Louise’s struggles as they make that difficult journey into making a new life for themselves.