Architecture Vancouver 1

Architecture. Art.

The Del Mar Inn Hotel

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

For about a decade starting in 1981 British Columbia's privatized power company, BC Hydro, had owned most of the block where they planned to build their new office tower. The Del Mar Inn Hotel, owned by George Riste, occupied the missing piece. The Del Mar is a small, unassuming building providing clean, affordable housing for the poor. Despite all the weight brought to bear by the Hydro giant corporation, including what must have been enormous amounts of money, Riste refused to sell. BC Hydro eventually had to redesign to build around the hotel.

The Inscription on the hotel is a work of art, here is a statement by the Artist :

"The strategy behind "Unlimited Growth ..." is direct. It is directed at those who operate our free-market economy in their own interests, while excluding those interests that would be 'responsive to the needs of the

community'. The subtext to "Unlimited Growth .." relates to several aspects of public art including the need to address the use of site-specific work as a way of intervening in local issues, and in this instance, acting as a marker of resistance by the economically marginalized, as represented by a parallel gallery and a hotel providing affordable housing.

Walter raises questions related to the systems underlying the transactions and power-plays that constitute normal business in the world of real estate development. In Walter's art the museum without walls is also a museum OF walls, walls new and old, as well as those walls that perpetuate economic class distinctions. Her text on the façade of the Del-Mar Hotel will stand as a witness to the various power-plays, including the threat to move B.C.

Hydro's head office to the suburb of Burnaby, that led to the development surrounding 553-555 Hamilton Street."

- from "The Interventions of Kathryn Walter" by Bill Jeffries, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1990

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