UBC Residence

While its floorplan is comparable to other Cheng-designed houses, the palette of materials, the deep section, the deep integration of natural light and custom garden layouts puts the Gillespie residence in a class by itself.

The street elevation is necessarily tempered, civil and restrained, while the garden elevation is one of Cheng's residential masterpieces, a sculpting of house form and surface in dynamic interplay with the yard's landscape plantings, also conceived by the architect. 

With its constructional discipline of cast concrete, the Gillespie house is a fractured Cubist take on suburbia, the upper middle class two storey house with garage pulled apart and reconceived, then set back into a leafy lane and lush garden. This is a second-regard design - more subversive upon inspection than at first sight.