If Rich Fairbourn were to retire, it’s not like he’d be sitting around twiddling his thumbs. At his Phoenix studio, there’s a storage room filled with chunks of wood, waiting to be changed into his luminous turned-wood vessels. Then there are the guitars he likes to build and a wife who’d like him to travel more. “I’d have plenty to do if I retired,” says Fairbourn, who founded his design/build company Build Inc. in 2005. “But I like what I do, so I keep at it.”
Fairbourn has been keeping at it since 1977 when the Utah native and Tulane University architecture grad landed in Phoenix. He moved around several architecture firms during his first few years in Arizona, joining architect Eddie Jones (still a great friend and collaborator) at Lescher and Mahoney, then working with architect Robert Fairburn (no relation) at his firm when they started doing projects in Saudi Arabia. “That firm hired anyone who could fog a mirror,” says Fairbourn with a laugh. He then joined architect Michael Munninger at his Architectural Alliance.
“I was getting frustrated as an architect,” recalls Fairbourn of those early years. “You’d develop a relationship with a client, but the contractor would come in with all the clout because they controlled the money, the budget.”
The frustration led to his getting a contractor’s license, something that was already in Fairbourn’s wheelhouse. “My father was a carpenter after he got out of the Navy,” he explains, “and we were always redoing houses. I also worked as a carpenter during college.” After being on his own for a while, Fairbourn joined forces with Andy Byrnes and, later, D.J. Fernandes—both fellow Tulane architecture grads—to form The Construction Zone in Phoenix, a design-build powerhouse known for building seminal work by Arizona’s best architects, as well as designing their own projects.
Fairbourn moved on in 2005, launching his own Build Inc. and converting an old blueprint office in Midtown Phoenix into the firm’s quarters. Now with seven colleagues at Build Inc., Fairbourn’s career arc has spanned projects such as working with architect Al Beadle on the 12th Street office complex, collaborating with Jones Studio on their Cardinals training facility and building residences designed by Brent Kendle, Michael P. Johnson, Bud Fonce and others. He’s also built his own designs.
More recently, Fairbourn built two Darren Petrucci-designed projects, including the
notable Ghost Wash House in Paradise Valley, which won numerous design awards, including national AIA accolades. He’s also building a Kendle project on Camelback Mountain and designing homes for a new
community in Prescott.
“I love building and I love designing,” Fairbourn says. “When I build someone else’s project, I find that architects appreciate having an architect do the construction.”
For now, Fairbourn keeps doing what he loves, full-on. He admits, though, that maybe he should take his foot off the gas now and again. “I guess I wouldn’t mind slowing down—but not
retiring. It would be great to work two days a week, not six—but I don’t think that’s going to happen soon.”