James K.M. Cheng’s Acclaimed Peninsula House On the Market in Vancouver

In active practice since the mid-1970s, Canadian architect James K.M. Cheng is best known for designing concrete-and-glass highrises, including Vancouver’s tallest skyscraper, the Living Shangri-La. But early in his career, the Harvard-trained Cheng produced several private residences in the Organic Modernist tradition, one of which is now hitting the market for the first time in two decades.

Known as the Peninsula House, the North Vancouver residence was built for a young family of fashion professionals from Hong Kong in 1975 and received an Award of Excellence from Architectural Record in 1977. In his late 20s at the time the house was built, Cheng’s design for the residence was influenced by his architectural hero Louis Kahn, who considered shadows and light to be elements as important to a structure’s design as its physical building materials.

Inserted into a lushly forested lot that overlooks nearly half an acre of city-owned parkland in the Upper Delbrook neighborhood, the 3,775-square-foot home is composed of a series of cedar-clad cubes. Public spaces — living room, dining room, family room, kitchen — are on the main level and bedrooms are on the upper level. The primary bedroom, on the east side of the house, connects to the other bedrooms via a bridge that overlooks the double-height sunken living room. The bridge is capped with a long skylight to balance the light entering from the massive living room windows.

Like the exterior, the home’s ceilings are clad in cedar, while its floors, exposed beams, window frames, and fireplace lintel are oil-rubbed oak. Outside, there’s a sizable cedar deck for enjoying the bucolic splendor of the wooded surroundings. The .28-acre grounds also feature two natural waterways.

The pedigreed property is up for sale with an asking price of CAD $3.25 million, about $2.4 million USD at current conversion rates. West Coast Modern holds the listing.