The Fogo Island Inn is a

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

located on the northern shore of Fogo Island in Newfoundland,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The inn consists of an outbuilding and main building that totals 4500m2 in area. The main building includes 29 guest rooms, a restaurant, Finnish-styled roof-top saunas designed by Rintala Eggertsson Architects, a

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ...

run in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, a library featuring books selected by Dr. Leslie Harris, and an art gallery curated by Fogo Island Arts. The main building has four floors, where the first and second floors house most of the public amenities, and 21 guest rooms are located on the third and fourth floors. The outbuilding includes the inn’s storage, laundry, and mechanical facilities. The Fogo Island Inn completed construction in June 2013. The Fogo Island Inn was designed by Todd Saunders for his client Zita Cobb. Cobb is the former CFO of a fibre-optics company and founder of Shorefast, a non-profit foundation that helps to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island. Saunders was born in

Gander, Newfoundland Gander is a town located in the northeastern part of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, approximately south of Gander Bay, south of Twillingate and east of Grand Falls-Windsor. Located on the nor ...

while Cobb was born on Fogo Island. The vision of the inn was to create a space to showcase and preserve the traditional

hospitality Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt describes ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

of Fogo Island. With the project being funded by Shorefast, the profits made from the inn are reinvested into the local community, helping to strengthen the once-struggling economy. Before the construction of the inn, four artist studios were constructed as a part of Shorefast’s mission to develop the island as an

ecotourism Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving responsible travel (using sustainable transport) to natural areas, conserving the environment, and improving the well-being of the local people. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide fund ...

destination to diversify the local economy, which is heavily dependent on

cod Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus '' Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not call ...

fishing.

History

The first settlements on Fogo Island were mainly due to the abundant codfish in the area and the population was strongly tied to the cod fishing industry. However, the local economy suffered significantly up until the 1990s due to international factory overfishing in the area and the population of Fogo Island also followed this downward trend. The population drastically decreased until a declaration of a moratorium on cod fishing in 1992 to bring the population of cod back from the brink of

extirpation Local extinction, also known as extirpation, refers to a species (or other taxon) of plant or animal that ceases to exist in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinct ...

. Many of the buildings on the island have been abandoned due to the population moving elsewhere for work. This history of decline is what prompted Zita Cobb to return to Fogo Island after a successful career in the fibre-optics industry to create Shorefast.

Design

The

floor plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

of the building resembles an “X” shape with one leg of the X running parallel to the shoreline which contains the 29 guest rooms. The other smaller leg of the X contains most of the public amenities such as the restaurant and the art gallery. The placement of each guest room points its view toward Little Fogo Island just north of Fogo Island in the

Labrador Sea The Labrador Sea (French: ''mer du Labrador'', Danish: ''Labradorhavet'') is an arm of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Labrador Peninsula and Greenland. The sea is flanked by continental shelves to the southwest, northwest, and northeast. It ...

. The site of the building was chosen to have a minimal impact on the landscape since due to the unique

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

on Fogo Island, the

native species In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often popularised as "with no human intervention") during history. The term is equ ...

would take significant time to recover if damaged. The northeast section of the building consists of

stilts Stilts are poles, posts or pillars that allow a person or structure to stand at a height above the ground. In flood plains, and on beaches or unstable ground, buildings are often constructed on stilts to protect them from damage by water, wav ...

supported made from

corten steel Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rus ...

and stands 30 feet in height which pays homage to the tradition where most local buildings are built on stilts. This is an example of the

vernacular architecture Vernacular architecture is building done outside any academic tradition, and without professional guidance. This category encompasses a wide range and variety of building types, with differing methods of construction, from around the world, bo ...

of the area where building a foundation into the ground was not possible due to the rocky surface. The inn is a steel-framed building but both the interior and exterior black spruce wood finishing are painted white which was intentionally designed to look like a Fogo Island

saltbox house A saltbox house is a gable-roofed residential structure that is typically two stories in the front and one in the rear. It is a traditional New England style of home, originally timber framed, which takes its name from its resemblance to a wooden ...

Sustainability

Located at a remote location, the inn integrates a self-sustaining system as part of the building’s construction. Rainwater is collected from the roof, filtered and stored in

cisterns A cistern (Middle English ', from Latin ', from ', "box", from Greek ', "basket") is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by ...

in the basement while 130 solar thermal collectors are used to heat water in the building. The placement of the outbuilding helps to shield the entrance of the main building from strong winds typical on the island.

Community Involvement

The construction process relied on local labour and material as much as possible. A roster of designers was brought from Europe to help create most of the interior elements of the building. The designed product was then

handcrafted A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

on the Fogo Island ranging from lighting and bed covers to key fobs and wallpapers; all were made to replicate the feeling of being inside a traditional Fogo Island home. Much of the furniture created for the inn is available for purchase due to many requests from guests, which further diversifies the economy of the island. There are mixed reviews of the organization's impact on the local community, considering there is an active dispute of taxes owed to the Municipality. The majority of the organization’s staff are non-Fogo Islanders. The local aspect applies to lower-paid positions while senior executive positions are held in Ontario.

References

{{Reflist Hotels in Newfoundland and Labrador Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador