Architect Todd Saunders Is Proving That Striking Design Can Be Its Own Destination
In 2002, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration contacted a young Bergen-based architect with an invitation that would change his career. Twenty years earlier, the government agency had introduced a program to attract more tourists to 18 scenic routes around the country. Part of the plan included commissioning works from artists and architects that would draw visitors to Norway’s more rural areas, boosting local economies and relieving tourism-related crowding in larger cities.
The group was now looking at Todd Saunders, an emerging architect primarily known for his residential work, to participate in a design competition for its latest installation. He had launched his namesake firm less than five years prior but was already labeled as one to watch for his inventiveness, attention to siting and landscape, and undeniably Scandinavian-modern aesthetic. (Saunders was born in Newfoundland but has lived in Bergen since the mid-1990s.) Accepting the invitation to design a piece for a bucolic location about three hours east of Bergen, Saunders worked with fellow architect Tommie Wilhelmsen on the Aurland Lookout—a dramatic woods-viewing structure that stretches nearly 100 feet over a dense grove of pine trees.
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“The work I do now, which I call destination architecture, started with the Aurland project,” Saunders says of the elegant lakefront observation platform that lets visitors walk out over a mountainside. “Once we did this tourist [stop], we started to do similar projects, which led to the Fogo Island Inn. I look at my work as destination pieces that attract people to a place. Instead of a city or town, the building is the magnet.”
It’s a mindset that squares nicely with the current age, in which snapping and sharing images of art, architecture, and food has become a social currency. As people travel more and top destinations continue to feel the squeeze of visitors, everyone is looking for hidden gems and off-the-beaten-path locales. But for Saunders, an avid hiker, biker, kayaker, and backcountry skier, an intimate, nature-forward approach reflects how he lives life—and how he thinks others want to live as well.
“That’s what the traveler is looking for nowadays,” he explains. “Something unique and smaller-scale. The pendulum of globalism has swung a little bit too far, to the point where so many of the places we travel just look the same. People everywhere are getting tired of it.”
Most of Saunders’s hospitality projects are one-offs: boutique or family-owned hotels, cabins, visitor centers in far-flung places. This, of course, is part of the appeal. It’s also becoming more necessary as populations grow and the amount of available, buildable land decreases. With a “nature first, architecture second” approach, Saunders is mindful of where and how projects are sited, but his idea of sustainability goes beyond attention to materials or carbon footprint, extending into the fabric of a community. Take his blockbuster endeavor, the 29-room Fogo Island Inn (which includes four artist-residency studios)—an initiative of the Shorefast charity founded by Canadian businesswoman and philanthropist Zita Cobb and her brothers Anthony and Alan. Located just off the coast of Newfoundland, the hotel is a big-name draw (both Gwyneth Paltrow and David Letterman have stayed) looking to shore up the future of the small Canadian island. Furniture and textiles, most notably the quilts, were all made by residents using local materials. “Quilting is integral to the culture and history of the island,” Saunders says. “I don’t know how to make a quilt, but every bed at the inn has a locally handmade quilt on it, and guests can purchase the quilts through the Fogo Island Workshop, which helps support the livelihood of these craftspeople.” The inn has helped rejuvenate the small island’s economy (in 1992, its cod fishery, a major employer, closed) by providing jobs and even attracting natives back from abroad. “In most projects, we lean on the locals to lead the cultural part of the project,” he explains. Saunders counts the consideration of culture—from art and history to food, tradition, and way of life—as an important pillar in his design practice.
This is true for projects such as 2018’s Illusuak Cultural Centre in Labrador, Canada, and a forthcoming visitor center in the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine. Opening in August, the project is funded by private philanthropist Roxanne Quimby and the Elliotsville Foundations, who chose Saunders’s firm for the design. Clad in raw, locally harvested and milled cedar, the multipronged building sits on a cliffside ledge deep in the forest. “It’s hospitality in a new way,” says Saunders. “You’re hiking through this forest, and this is the first building that you run into and can visit.” His firm worked closely with four Indigenous tribes to best reflect the history and culture of the region in the design and materiality.
Other jobs on the books include another visitor center, on Vancouver Island, a botanical garden in Sweden, and a slate of residential work. The firm is also currently in conversations with an international yoga brand about designing a retreat facility for leadership and teacher trainings. Saunders is also keen to discuss the future of hospitality design and how individual destinations can have a major social, economic, and cultural impact without a commensurate environmental price.
“We’re thinking about this approach of staying hyperlocal,” he says. “Shortening the distances we travel, but making it no less meaningful. For example, how about a series of small but interestingly designed cabins that you walk or ski between? What if there was a seven-day walking trail from one city to the next? This is where architecture has a role to play by keeping things intriguing and different, on a smaller scale. There’s no reason to have to travel that far to find uniqueness.”
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