Ella Eser’s family home is no White Picket Fence Dream. Instead, her future-forward parents’ pad is a colour-changing, super-eco architectural labour of love
The American Dream: move to America, work hard, send your kids to university, build a custom, net-zero home that shakes the architectural world and serves as a prototype for self-sustainable environmental homes of the future, blurring the lines between technology and nature, and retire.
Image courtesy of Walls & Ceilings Online
Wait, what? The story of my parents is more like the American Dream 2.0. When the engineer and doctor emigrated from Turkey, I don’t think they imagined they would be living in the Kameleon House 25 years later. But last year, when my youngest sister left the nest for university, my mom jumped on her dream to live on a farm in the California countryside.
My dad saw her dream as a challenge to design a home beyond his standards of living and into the realm of the future of living. Together, they built the Kameleon House.
Photo: Chip Allen
The first thing you notice about our house is the color, or rather, colors. As you move past it, it changes from a light green to a warm pink. This is because of a special kind of paint called Kameleon Color by Valspar. It contains mica flakes that reflect a different color depending on the way the light is hitting it – much like a hologram. The paint does more than just make the house look cool. It is also contains a Fluropon coating that is reflective, making the house more energy efficient. The coating is also resistant to the elements, ensuring that the shine and color of the paint won’t fade. At least that’s what they tell me; I still believe it’s magic paint.
Images courtesy of Walls & Ceilings Online
My dad didn’t stop at the surface of the house though. He took the term “energy efficient” to the ground, roof, walls and back, and created a net-zero home. I had no idea what “net-zero” meant when my dad told me one year ago. Now, it’s the only type of house that makes sense to me. What it means is that we produce more than 100% of the energy that we consume. Below are the features that make our house entirely energy efficient:
Our roof has 60 solar panels that produce 110-120 kW of clean energy on a sunny Californian day. We use about 30kW on an average day and send the rest to the energy grid for others to use.
The 6-inch thick insulated metal walls and roof themselves make the house more energy efficient by maintaining a constant temperature inside.
The house has a metal frame. Metal is more sustainable than wood because it is recyclable. It also cools off faster, keeping us cooler in the summer than the typical wood-framed home.
Image courtesy of Walls & Ceilings Online
The temperature of our house is regulated by geothermal heating and cooling. The ground ten feet beneath our house is always 60-70 degreesF due to the insulating properties of earth. The geothermal system uses this fact to control temperature. It is simply a system that works with the earth instead of against it like typical air conditioning systems that burn through fossil fuels and emit carbon gases.
Our water is from a well and recycled for crop irrigation.
We compost all of our food scraps and produce less than a square foot of trash per week. We aim to be waste-free in the future.
Image courtesy of Walls & Ceilings Online
We also have a home garden with seasonal vegetables, an herb garden, and fruit trees. We are still growing our garden but we aim to be self-sustaining in the near future. (We are getting close as we reduced our food shopping trips dramatically).
The Kameleon house is also technologically advanced. You can control anything from the automatic blinds to the sound system with a smartphone or iPad. Nerd Alert: my dad’s favorite app tracks our daily energy production and usage.
Before the Kameleon House there was no reason to travel down County Road 103. Now cars and biking groups slow down and stop, literally turning their heads to get a better look at the color-changing house. A professor of architecture once knocked on our door asking who the architect was. Professor, meet my dad. Not just professors are interested in the house though. A surprising amount of my friends and my sisters’ friends have been eager to talk to my parents about the house. In the past I would have been horrified that my parents would embarrass me in front of my friends. Now I am thrilled that my generation is showing an interest in the future of sustainable living.
I have to admit, when my parents were in the process of building the house and I was still an undergraduate at UCLA, I made no effort to be involved. As the oldest, most responsible daughter, I thought they were being selfish and over-ambitious in their endeavor. But after seeing the result I realized I was being the selfish one. What they created isn’t just for our family. It’s a model for how American homes, (especially in temperate regions like California) could and should be. Not only would homes be more beautiful, they would save our environment and not to mention save money. I have been living in this house for over a year and I cannot find a downside (besides being 23 and having to live with my parents).
Credit: Chip Allen
The iconic color-changing paint sets the Kameleon House apart from any other living structure I’ve ever seen but it blends in perfectly with the surrounding green farmland and purple mountains. When I watch the sun set behind the house it doesn’t feel like there is a structure in the way of the sunset but rather it is also moving with the sun. I am proud to live in a house that feels harmonious with the environment.
Who said houses had to stand out from the environment? Why shouldn’t they mesh with nature – Earth’s purest form of beauty? The homes we live in shouldn’t separate us from our earth; they should let us live together and guilt-free. I can’t help but envision housing communities made up of Kameleon Homes and community gardens. One of our friends told my dad that we had created the “home of the future in the present.” It seems far-fetched now, but net-zero Kameleon Homes might become the norm one day.
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