The Skwachàys Lodge and Gallery in Vancouver originally opened in 2012 to provide affordable housing for Aboriginal people at risk of homelessness, as well as healing lodge apartments for Aboriginal patients coming to the city for medical treatment. One-hundred percent of the Lodge’s profits flow directly to its nonprofit owner/operator, the Vancouver Native Housing Society. Shortly after Skwachàys opened, Jon Zwickel, president of InnVentures Hospitality, visited the gallery and had a chance meeting with David Eddy, CEO of the housing society. An experienced hotelier, Zwickel saw great potential to boost the venture’s return on investment by strengthening the connection between the gallery, the hotel, and its 24 artists-in-residence. Under Zwickel’s leadership, a varied group of industry professionals came together to transform Skwachàys Lodge into an 18-room boutique hotel with a social impact. Eddy selected six Aboriginal artists, each of whom created a vision and theme for three hotel suites. Then, six interior design firms donated their services to bring the artists’ visions to life. “The biggest point was to make sure guests and tourists—and hopefully even people within our own city—would get to experience North American and Native art in a much more interactive and immersive way,” says Adele Rankin of B+H CHIL Design, which partnered with artist-in-residence Clifton Fred on three distinct rooms.
Subdued Hues
A monochromatic color palette and subdued furniture and fixtures ensure the artwork is the focal point of the room. “We complemented all of the artwork with pieces in the room that were quiet, so that it didn’t detract from what we were trying to tell, which was ultimately the artist’s story,” Rankin says.
Signature Style
For the “Poem Room,” B+H CHIL wanted guests to feel as if they were inside artist Clifton Fred’s mind. “We plastered the walls with a great array of his art and poems, almost like a really immersive gallery experience,” Rankin describes. “We found his cursive writing to be almost art unto itself.”
Picture Perfect
The design firm worked with Metro Wallcovering to transform Fred’s art into a digital print format. “We came up with the idea of doing a headboard wall that took half of this snowy owl and an excerpt of a poem across the wall,” she says. The adjacent wall features a collage of other works in smaller scale.
