Inside Small Businesses - Solid State Design

In this ongoing series, I explore the creative forces shaping Fowey’s independent business scene. This week, I meet Ian Fairweather, a quietly brilliant architect rewriting the rules, one thoughtful detail at a time.

Rachel Roberts

When I arrive at Ian Fairweather’s home in Fowey, the first thing that stops me is the colour. The front door, a vivid, almost jubilant orange, glows against weathered timber. “The same shade as a Polruan ferry,” Ian laughs as he welcomes me inside. The hint feels deliberate: modern confidence meeting maritime tradition. It’s a theme that runs through everything he does.

Inside, light floods the space. He leads me straight to what he calls his “postcard window”, a perfect frame capturing the sweep of Place and St Fimbarrus Church, with the river curling behind like brushstrokes. It was, he explains, part of an extension added after he bought the property in 2018. “The view was always here,” he says, “I just gave it a stage.”

Ian, a chartered architect who works under the banner of of Solid State Design Ltd, divides his time between Cornwall and London, though his heart, and increasingly his client base, are anchored on this stretch of coast. His connection with Fowey is deep-rooted: family holidays here in the 1970s with his Aunt and Uncle who had a framers on Bull Hill, a Grade II listed townhouse on North Street bought in 2001, and finally the decision, after the pandemic, to make the move permanent. “It felt like a punctuation mark,” he says. “London had been full stop; Fowey was the next chapter.”

The house he calls home, formerly a bed and breakfast, was in a state of despair when he bought it in 2018. “The roof leaked, and nothing had been touched since the sixties,” he recalls with a smile. His instinct was to rearrange the entire layout, shifting walls, realigning views, and introducing calm where clutter had been. The result is a study in lived-in precision: texture, proportion, and purpose in easy conversation.

Ian’s path to architecture wasn’t linear. “I only became an architect because I flunked my A-Levels,” he grins. A fortuitous turn led him instead into technical drawing, then an HND in building construction, and later a degree in architecture at South Bank University, while working to fund his studies. That foundation in both design and construction still shapes his practice today. “Understanding how buildings go together is a completely different skill from imagining them,” he says. “I like doing both.”

His early career included a stint with Fitch & Co., designing interiors for Debenhams and financial institutions across Europe from Amsterdam to Prague before setting up on his own. Today his projects range from extensions to townhouses to Arts and Crafts renovations. “Every site has its own rhythm,” he explains. “I don’t do a ‘house style.’ It’s about listening, really listening, to the client and the building.”

Ian is known for creating intelligent spaces that people don’t expect. “I love offering a solution nobody had considered,” he says. That may mean tucking a home into a tight London plot or balancing a modern design on the edge of a Cornish cliff. One of his early projects, a bold conservatory in Wandsworth, was even shortlisted for a Royal Institute of British Architects award.

He works mostly through word of mouth. “A website’s on my to-do list,” he admits, “but it’s tricky. Once you show one kind of work, people think that’s the only thing you do.” Instead, reputation and conversation are his calling cards. Alongside his design work, Ian also provides planning advice, detailed technical drawings, and occasionally acts as an expert witness in planning appeals and court cases - complex, quiet work that demands both rigour and patience.

Outside architecture, he’s restless in the best way: a keen walker who has completed the Long-Distance Walkers Association's 100 miles in under 48 hours challenge, once finishing in just 39. He keeps bees on his allotment near Ready Money Cove, producing “Readymoney Honey,” and volunteers with the Cornwall Wildlife Trust’s Sea Search project, documenting marine habitats around the coast. “It’s balance,” he shrugs. “A day in the water, or out on the cliffs, that’s where the ideas come.”

Talk turns to trends, and Ian lights up. “Low-energy design isn’t the future, it’s now,” he says. “There’s no reason new homes can’t be zero-energy these days.” For him, sustainability is not a statement but an expectation, whether he’s weaving new glass into old stone or designing entirely from scratch.

When I ask what success looks like, he smiles. “It’s when clients see what they didn’t know they wanted,” he says. “That moment of surprise - that’s everything.”

Based in Fowey, Solid State Design Ltd. embodies Ian’s thoughtful approach to architecture, quietly intelligent, practical, and rooted in place. Specialising in residential projects, planning advice, and sensitive extension and conservation design, his work speaks for itself. There’s still no website - and somehow, that feels perfectly Ian.