Architecture & Design
Designed by Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders, Fogo Island Inn is both a unique contemporary creation and an embodiment of Newfoundland outport traditions. It stands out on Fogo Island, yet remains distinctly of this place.
Created by collaboration
The Inn was built through an eight-year collaborative process that involved local and international architects, designers, makers, and artisans. Together, they crafted ways of preserving Fogo Island’s cultural heritage through traditional materials and approaches that were re-imagined and translated into the visual language of contemporary design.
Honouring tradition
The building contains many nods to traditional outport architecture, including its distinctive stilts. Mirroring fishing stages along the coast, these stilts, or “shores”, underpin many of the buildings on Fogo Island due to the rocky topography. They support the Inn, while minimizing its footprint and impact on the land.
Entangled with nature
The X-shaped structure features a two-storey west-to-east wing containing gathering spaces, and a four-storey south-west to north-east wing, parallel to the coast, containing all rooms and suites. While radical in its design and emboldened by sharp angles, the Inn feels at home amidst Fogo Island’s uneven landscape.
Built on regenerative principles
Todd Saunders’ mandate was to design a property that could stand for a century and beyond. To do so, regenerative principles were adopted while designing the Inn. That’s why we chose to build at a scale that made sense for the size of Fogo Island, in a way that was mindful of nature and community.
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Furnished by Fogo Island
Generations of makers populate Fogo Island where people once built their own boats and houses. In keeping with this handmade tradition, nearly all the furnishings at Fogo Island Inn were created on Fogo Island. Contemporary artists and designers worked with local makers to design furniture and textiles that express a new outport aesthetic and weave the new from the fabric of the old.
About the Architect
Todd Saunders is a Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect known to infuse his contemporary buildings with an artistic sensibility that is deeply in tune with the uniqueness of northern terrains. His use of natural materials and simple yet striking geometries set him apart as one of the most celebrated architects of his generation. He is recognized for constructing buildings that acknowledge and understand vernacular histories but create something entirely new.
The founder of Saunders Architecture, Saunders lectures worldwide and has served as a visiting professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.