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@ranchandcoast RANCH & COAST MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2026 117 French and Spanish and Italian — so all of these Old World styles were being perpetuated in those communities. Lucky for me, because that was my passion, so I was a good fit during that time of growth." Gillespie couldn't have known how deeply her designs shaped the style of the communities in which she worked. "I think at the time, I was just moving forward, doing what I liked and doing what I thought was important for my clients, and for the communities, and for the feeling of building a nest for a client," she says. at kind of head-down, hard- work ethic pushed Gillespie even when the economic climate made a career as an architect a somewhat risky endeavor. "I came to Fairbanks Ranch and rented an office in Fairbanks Village Plaza because I loved the architecture," she remembers. "But I was pretty afraid, because this was 1982 and we were right in the middle of a big recession. ey were developing Fairbanks, and I was developing my architectural business, and it was a scary time to be making a big move, but they did it and so did I — I moved in there and started working on homes in Fairbanks Ranch." She also built her clientele in Rancho Santa Fe, where her first project was a home on El Camino Del Norte, which led to another home the following year on El Secreto. "I wound up doing 28 homes in the Covenant over the next couple of decades," she says. It's hard not to wonder if, as prolific as she has been, she's ever reluctant to close out a project after being so deeply entrenched in its creation. "I do feel like they're all my children," she says. "It takes sometimes two years to go from the design phase to the construction finish. So, you do live with the owners and their needs and their desires and their hopes and dreams, and you live with the builders and the subcontractors and the engineers that work on the structure, and the landscape architects — you work with all these people, and it's like a huge family of creating a home…but that's the process, and that's a lot of fun. And it's really a joy to hand that over when the construction is done." Not surprisingly, Gillespie has worked with a handful of celebrities over the years, but she's always remained very discreet about her famous clientele, which she likens to something akin to doctor- patient confidentiality. But she does reveal one client that was particularly famous; enough so that Gillespie herself found working with her a bit surreal. e client was none other than Janet Jackson. Instead of simply being starstruck, Gillespie marveled at the connection from a truly unique vantage point. "At that point in my career, in 1990, that moment when she wanted to live in that house, it felt like this artistic validation by another artist who saw something in my work that she loved, and I was just beside myself with excitement about it," she says. "When I was at San Diego State, I was a dance major, and I taught dance in high school for seven years," she continues. "I think what's interesting is that dance choreography is very much movement through space and shapes and forms and colors and the music that goes with it," she says. "All those art elements, they just go from one venue to another — dance and music and writing and poetry and architecture. To me, they have so much in common." Gillespie's reputation has, at times, created full-circle moments, like when the former 11-year-old girl in Kensington who grew up loving work by those who deeply influenced San Diego architecture found herself charged with a project to renovate a Lilian Rice home in Rancho Santa Fe. Daunting? Not quite, says Gillespie: "I found it extremely challenging and fun to because I kept thinking, 'If Lilian's looking down, I hope she's happy with it.'" What Rice cannot say, others will. Joe Davis, who developed Fairbanks Ranch, praises Gillespie for the vision and talent that helped shape what the community evolved to become. "From her earliest homes in Fairbanks Ranch to others in surrounding communities, she has made a mark of architectural integrity that will have lasting value in the neighborhoods that are fortunate enough to be a part of her creations," he says. gillespieresidentialdesign.com Dena Gillespie Gillespie stands on the balcony of the home she designed for Janet Jackson Gillespie stands on the balcony of the home she designed for Janet Jackson