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Genius Loci: Fogo Island Inn and Artists Studios

Over the years, I have come across a number of small communities that have used architecture to revive their flagging fortunes. However most, like Nelson in the interior of British Columbia, or Napier on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, did so by uncovering the hidden glories of a forgotten past, rather than by building anything new.

In Nelson the frontier architecture of Baker Street, long concealed under successive layers of "improvements," helped transform a failing resource dependent economy into one based on tourism, arts and crafts. Two decades on, the ‘little city that could’ continues to thrive. Napier’s story is a variation on the theme. After a devastating earthquake in 1931, the city’s commercial centre was rebuilt in the Art Deco style. As Art Deco fell from favour, so Napier’s buildings were re-clad to suit the tastes of the time. Lost for two generations, the unique heritage value of the city’s civic architecture was rediscovered in the 1990s. Now Napier’s economy has broadened to include cultural tourism, with the focus being an increasingly popular Art Deco Festival held each February. Since the mid-1990s and the completion of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, eye-catching architecture has emerged as a powerful tool in the revitalization of large cultural institutions in major cities. However, this phenomenon is much rarer in small communities. The most celebrated example is to be found on Fogo Island in Newfoundland where, precipitated by the collapse of the cod fishery, the permanent population has declined from a peak of 6000 in the 1960s, to around 2500 today. This exodus threatens the survival of the centuries-old community and its culture.

The Fogo Island Inn and Artists Studios are the architectural manifestations of a cultural renaissance project conceived and financed by the Shorefast Foundation. Shorefast in turn is the creation of Zita Cobb, born and raised on Fogo but who made her considerable fortune as a CFO for petroleum start up companies in the Alberta oil patch. Returning to a Fogo Island much changed from her childhood, Cobb’s vision was to somehow arrest the decline. She sought to create another sustainable leg for the island economy, one that would draw on the 400 years of ingenuity, determination and resilience embedded in the DNA of every islander. Shorefast’s various endeavours, which include the Inn, the artists studios and an annual boat race, seek to revive elements of local culture in boat-building and seamanship; art, craft and hospitality - but to do so in a contemporary way. Cultural continuity is important to Cobb, who observes: “Forgetting is a kind of extinction. But we know we can’t be a museum. We have to be relevant in the world. We must participate in it in an unmediated way.” The remarkable Inn and studios Cobb commissioned for Fogo Island are the creations of Newfoundland-born, Norwegian-based architect Todd Saunders. The studios in particular have attracted international attention. The intention is that there will be six of them in all, each associated with one of Fogo’s existing coastal communities. To date, four of the six have been completed, each a simple yet sculptural object, positioned with meticulous care in the landscape. Seemingly suspended between the rocky shoreline and the pounding surf of the North Atlantic, they are named for the most prominent aspect of their composition: Long Studio, Squish Studio, Tower Studio and Bridge Studio.

The studios are managed by Fogo Island Arts, an offshoot of the Shorefast Foundation that operates an artists-in-residence program through which international artists come to the island for three or four months at a time. Each studio has a work area, sleeping area, kitchenette and a bathroom with composting toilet. Built on stilts in the traditional Fogo fashion, and generating their own power from solar panels, the studios are designed to have minimal impact on the environment.

Saunders tried to avoid any romantic connection to the traditional architecture of Fogo, instead drawing his inspiration from Newfoundland artists and musicians whose work is unmistakably contemporary, yet equally clearly connected to its roots. His use of simple forms, wood plank siding, and bold monochrome colours give the buildings a sense of familiarity, contributing to, rather than clashing with, the genius loci. For its part, the Inn includes wherever possible things that are made in Fogo. As Zita Cobb puts it, “Things that are created now and of this time. Made from materials from Fogo, using techniques that are of the place. We must carry on the inherited knowledge and create a new economy out of our hearts and souls. "Our sense of our own value comes from the point of intersection between the local and the universal. Shorefast came out of my own beliefs in both social democracy and the market economy. The question is not one of either/or but of both/and. How do we achieve business ends in social minded ways? How do we create community assets that help communities find more resilience?”

Cobb’s question is a universal one, applying equally to rural and urban communities. As artists and other visitors begin to arrive on Fogo from all corners of the globe, it appears that her experiment is destined for success. Though the question is universal, the answers to it will by necessity be diverse, as each community draws inspiration from its own history, and builds a more resilient future inspired by its own unique cultural, intellectual and material assets. Client: Shorefast Foundation Architect: Saunders Architecture Photos © Bent René Synnevåg 1) Tower Studio 2) Long Studio 3) Squish Studio 4) Bridge Studio