Patrons of Culture

Westbank has evolved into a cultural practice and each new project, exhibition and exploration offers a glimpse into the next leg of our journey. We are involved in multiple public art commissions, with nearly 30 installations by some of the world’s most accomplished artists either complete or underway. We are conducting our piano program with Fazioli, creating a collection of custom instruments that each respond to the typol-ogy of one of our buildings. We are taking on projects like the reinterpretation of a typical Vancouver city laneway, at Telus Garden. At the same time at a larger scale, we have become one of the world’s largest LEED platinum developers, as well as the owner and operator of Vancouver’s district energy system, Creative Energy. We strive to develop relationships with the world’s best architectural talent. This has led us to sponsor the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and commission the Kengo Kuma designed Blood Alley Music Venue. These projects are explorations, rather than business ventures, that allow us to function as patrons of great architec-ture. We run our three hotels similarly, constantly and at all times, reinvesting in them because we see them as an expression of our creativity.

At the core of our practice lies an orientation towards projects like Woodwards, Vancouver House, Mirvish Village, TELUS Garden and Oakridge – catalysts for larger change both in their cities and on a global scale. This has informed our evolution and will continue to guide our growth even as we expand our horizons further. We are here to create. To provoke. To ignite. We are the vehicle for a new movement of cultural expression.

We are a culture company. Everything we do serves to propagate culture. We define our philosophy through collabo-ration and association. We invite unique and interesting collab-orations between cultural pioneers, showcasing their work, using it to inform and influence our projects. We take on the role of patron of culture, and distribute it globally. In doing so, we define ourselves as more than just a real estate company, or a prop-erty development company – we become a bank that deals exclusively in cultural trans-actions, a global force for the exposition and propagation of cultural movements.