Situated on a hill high above a neighboring cherry orchard that also offers breathtaking westward views of Lake Michigan, the Chameleon Tower was designed to relate to the materials and scale of the surrounding agricultural landscape. And with no other house in sight, much of the built environment consisted of the occasional metal farm building along the rural road that runs through the orchard to the house.

The home is located in Northport, Mich., some 300 miles north of Detroit, on a small peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan, and was built as a weekend retreat for a young family who live about three hours away. In addition to wanting to take advantage of the spectacular views, they also requested a large living and play area where they could all be together, as well as small bedrooms so that the kids would be encouraged to play in the main living areas or outdoors.

The owner's children play between the house's double-skin. The steel platforms serve as scaffolds and fire escapes.

All of these factors posed a significant challenge to design a home that could not only meet several complex functional and aesthetic objectives, but also blend in nicely while capitalizing on the beautiful scenery - complete with a price tag that wouldn't break the bank. Based on the number of prestigious industry awards it received, Anderson Anderson Architecture's Chameleon Tower more than met that challenge.

Completed in 2006, the end result is a striking, five-storey tower rising above the rolling topography of its cherry orchard site, while also capturing the desired views of Lake Michigan and the surrounding agricultural landscape. Due to the slope of the site, the family enters the 148 m² home at the third level, descending down to the kids' bedrooms and bath or moving up to the main living spaces that look out over the orchards to Lake Michigan.

The home's outer skin changes with the light and colours, like its namesake reptile.

According to Peter Anderson, who runs the San Francisco, Calif.-based firm with his brother, Mark, geotechnical conditions as well as the sensitive, complicated landscape all played a significant role in determining the overall design strategy. He also attributes the use of simple materials like steel and industrial detailing as chief reasons behind the project's success.

"The building system was designed to inexpensively accommodate a variety of complex site conditions with minimal disturbance to the natural topography, water flow and vegetation. A more conventional house would have appeared as an unsympathetic intrusion in this pure landscape, and with its singular vertical presence rising above the orchard, the tower reflects the austere, scaleless non-particularity of the occasional metal farm buildings dotted elsewhere on the hills," he said.

To help mask the scale, the building is wrapped in a skirting wall of corrugated, translucent acrylic slats, standing two feet out from the galvanized sheet-metal-clad wall surface on steel frames that also serve as window washing platforms and emergency exit ladders. 

This sustainable home was built with low-maintenance, energy- and resource-efficient materials like steel, and prefabricated Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) panels were used for the walls, floors and roof, keeping costs and on-site labour to a minimum. A steel moment frame allowed for the narrow height of the structure and for loft-like spaces within the main living area, which provided a wide-open vertical tower of space that also allowed light to flow upward through the house. "The moment frame rises 31/2 storeys and frames the dramatic lake views that are seen through the floor to ceiling windows. This great expanse of glass could not have been achieved without the use of a steel moment frame," Anderson said.

The ultimate perch in the tower was reached by a dramatic cantilevered steel stair hanging high above the earth. Fabricated off-site, the stair was transported in one piece and raised by crane to the nearly-finished house, which Anderson also says could only have been achieved through the use of steel.

The exterior surface of the house is corrugated steel, chosen for its low maintenance requirements, and for the beauty of the softly reflective silver surface that captures the changing light of the different seasons and weather patterns. And the front deck on the lake view side of the house is cantilevered out from the face of the building on a pair of steel wide-flange beams.

The house also is wrapped with a multi-functional second skin of corrugated acrylic slats, suspended 24 inches outside the corrugated steel siding, resulting in the chameleon effect for which the project is named. "In all four seasons, the house is intended to gather the colors of the adjacent landscape and foliage, reflecting light and colour from the galvanized siding surface back onto the acrylic corrugations. The effect is a hazy, mirage-like blending with the landscape in some conditions, and a sharply crisp, icicle and rain drop reflecting chimera in others," Anderson said.

The house is five storeys with a third floor entryway.

In addition to providing privacy, the double skin develops a chimney cooling effect around the outer skin as the heated air envelope around the house moves rapidly upward to draw cool air into the house. Meanwhile, the interior central skylight enhances this summer chimney effect, with no need for mechanical air-conditioning. As a result, warm air is drawn in open windows in the winter, while rippling updrafts of hot air in the summer draw cool air upward for a venturi exhaust breeze out the house windows.

As a prototype panelized home, the Chameleon Tower also is part of a series of projects by Anderson Anderson that seek to use prefabrication techniques and new building construction methods and materials to create low cost, high quality, environmentally sensitive, and site-and programme-adaptable manufactured structures. The structural system, enclosure system and finishes for the Tower were all chosen to be costs-effective to produce and install.

"The house was completed by a commercial contractor in less than eight weeks by using panelized prefabrication and industrial materials and details. The construction cost for the building was $286,000 (€225,000), exclusive of utilities and site development costs," said Anderson, who added that they expect the cost will reduce even further once this prototype system is employed in volume production.

"Off-site fabrication of all of the steel elements and the Structural Insulated Panels translated into a substantial savings in construction time and cost," he said.