Fogo Island Inn

“Fogo Island is big and small–big enough to be interesting, yet small enough to know.

Outside:

Located off the Northeast Coast of Newfoundland, Canada, Fogo Island is a remote yet accessible outport community found at 49.6667° N, 54.1833° W. “Fogo” is the Portuguese word for fire, and the Island was likely named by passing sailors who noticed small fires burning on our shores. Situated in the Labrador Current along “Iceberg Alley,” the Island is bounded by the rugged shores of the wild North Atlantic Ocean.

Fogo Island spans about 35 kilometres from east to west and 24 kilometres from north to south with 2,395 people living in 10 distinct communities. The Island boasts countless plant and animal species that thrive in its untamed wilderness and icy waters. Although located just over halfway between the equator and the North Pole, the Labrador Current passing by Fogo Island’s doorstep brings with it the makings for a subarctic landscape and a temperate maritime climate. The Island’s boreal forest plays host to herds of caribou, beavers, foxes, mosses, grasses, and wildflowers. Migrating whales and icebergs visit in the spring, and fall’s berry season finds Fogo Island carpeted in at least two dozen varieties of edible berries

The isolation from the mainland and the lives lived in intimate and profound entanglement with the forces of nature and the ferocious North Atlantic have created a place of unique stories and traditions. Located as it is on the outside edge of the North American continent, it is not surprising that the Flat Earth Society considers Fogo Island to be one of the four corners of the earth.

Fogo island Inn has an international reputation for exceptional, embodied, place-specific hospitality and bold, thoughtful, humanistic contemporary design.
Inside:

Fogo Island Inn was designed by Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders. The 43,000 square-foot Inn is perched on stilts and hugs the North Atlantic coastline, affording all 29 suites with floor-to-ceiling views of sea and sky. All suites showcase the richness of their locality and clearly express a modern take on traditional Newfoundland outport design and décor. The Inn’s architecture is bold, optimistic, and distinctly of this place. Though radical in its design, the Inn still speaks to the traditional outport Newfoundland aesthetic.

Two floors of guest suites sit atop the Inn’s stilts, a distinct nod to traditional outport fishing stages. These stilts, or “shores,” underpin many of the buildings on Fogo Island due to the rocky, undulating topography. At the Inn, they support the Inn while also minimizing the overall building footprint and impact on the adjacent rocks, lichens, and berries. The Inn’s sharp angles and rough contours feel at home amidst Fogo Island’s jagged and uneven landscape.
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 of the guest suites. The first floor includes the contemporary art gallery curated by Fogo Island Arts, the dining room, bar, lounge, and a heritage library containing works of both fiction and non-fiction pertaining to Newfoundland which is open to Inn guests as well as the local community of Fogo Island. The cinema, meeting room, gym, and reading room are located on the second floor, and the fourth floor roof deck houses wood-fired saunas and outdoor hot tubs.

All of the guest suites feature floor-to-ceiling windows that offer uninterrupted views of the North Atlantic. Guest room sizes vary from 350 to 1 100 square feet, with suites on the third and fourth floors all including wood-burning stoves. The ceilings of the rooms on the fourth floor follow the dramatic slope of the roof, resulting in the three most easterly rooms enjoying double volume spaces with the sleeping area located on the mezzanine. Great care was taken to provide exceptional sound-proofing in order to ensure that guests hear only the sounds of nearby ocean waves. All of the Inn’s rooms were created using only natural materials such as wood, wool, cotton, and linen. The only plastic in the guest rooms is the telephone.”

The Fogo Island Inn offers exceptional dining, a cozy bar and lounge, library of all things Newfoundland, art gallery, cinema, sauna and hot tubs.

Courtesy of The Fogo Island Inn