To be good at what you do, obviously you have to have experience, but you also have to have some great teachers, and I’ve been fortunate to have quite a few. Resource Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability have been guiding principles throughout my career.
Tony Robinson, President and Founder, has served in numerous areas of the construction industry for over 30 years, including: fabrication, specialty sub-contracting, distribution, manufacturers’ representation, product design & development, and general contracting. He has a BA in Philosophy & English from the University of California at Berkeley, a MS in Design, Engineering Technology and Business Administration from the University of North Texas and is Adjunct Professor in Environmental Sustainability at Southern Methodist University. He is a member of the Association of Energy Engineers, the American Solar Energy Society, the North Texas Renewable Energy Group, and The Edgemont Park Neighborhood Association, which received the Preservation Achievement Award from Preservation Dallas in 2009. He is the author of High-Performance Buildings: A Guide for Owners & Managers (AEE Books – Taylor & Francis, 2014). In 2018 he founded Net3 Houses, an initiative dedicated to building compact, resource efficient and cost-effective housing.
LANDSCAPING
I’ve been working on land and buildings since I was a teenager and I was employed on the grounds crew of a large estate on the coast of Maine, taking care of lawns, swimming pools and vegetable and flower gardens. My boss could grow a cauliflower on a concrete slab. When I was in college in California I worked for a landscape architect who had a construction company. He taught us how to take care of trees and shrubs, how to build landscape gardens, stone walls without mortar, and dry-laid retaining walls made out of broken concrete and planted with succulents. He had a Zero-Waste Operation: in over three years, we never took ANYTHING to the dump.
GREENHOUSES
After college I moved to Tucson, Arizona to go into business. I learned how to design, fabricate and install residential and commercial greenhouses, and I became skilled in fabricating structures with wood, aluminum, glass and plastics. We designed and built drip-feed hydroponic watering systems and geodesic domes.
ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTS
We expanded the company, opened another office in Texas and broadened the business to include residential and commercial glazing systems, daylighting, and a skylight manufacturing facility. I was trained by Masters in Roofing & Waterproofing, Architectural Sheet Metal Fabrication, and I studied architectural and mechanical drafting, solar energy, and properties of building materials. I formed Axis Design-Build in 1989 originally as a manufacturers’ rep organization which designed, specified and sold architectural products for the building envelope. We also advised commercial building owners on roofing, waterproofing and glazing. I returned to the University and pursued a Masters Degree in Design, Engineering Technology and Business Administration. I learned visual arts, manufacturing and plastics engineering, materials science, marketing, and how to write technical papers.
DESIGN-BUILD
Eventually I decided that I wanted to renovate and construct whole buildings, and so I apprenticed to a Master Carpenter/General Contractor who taught me all aspects of the construction process. At Axis Design-Build I have subsequently applied all of my training to numerous construction projects over the last 20 years.
SUSTAINABLE HOUSING
In 2018 I founded Net3 Houses, which designs, engineers and constructs strong, lightweight, compact, resource-efficient, hybrid, low-emissions, cost-effective buildings.