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After a two-year search, S.J. Sherbanuk thought he had found his ideal country property high atop the Niagara Escarpment near Collingwood, Ont. He bartered with the owner but couldn't strike a deal. Frustrated after another failed negotiation, he went for a walk.

Across the road, he found a sign blown over by the wind. Mr. Sherbanuk makes his living from scrap metal, so he thinks nothing of scrambling over rough terrain to examine a rusty piece of junk.

He flipped the sign over and saw its message spelled out in block letters: "Build your dream home here."

So ended Mr. Sherbanuk's search for a plot of land where he could combine his love of the outdoors with his uncommon passion for the industrial landscape of steel and nickel mining and tailing ponds.

The property had languished on the market so long that the sign had fallen over and the real estate listing had expired. When Mr. Sherbanuk called the agent listed on the sign, he launched a process that led to his purchase of the 37-acre property.

When it came time to build a shelter, Mr. Sherbanuk turned to James Campbell of Rockside Campbell Design Inc., who had studied architecture at the University of Manitoba and the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland.

"I don't want a house, I want a shed," Mr. Sherbanuk told Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Sherbanuk was not interested in the typical country pastime of restoring a Victorian farmhouse, and Mr. Campbell was equally adamant that he would take on new work only if the project allowed him to design a modernist building.

The two knew they were on the same page when Mr. Campbell arrived at their first meeting with a stack of books and magazines and Mr. Sherbanuk pulled out his file of tear sheets depicting favourite houses.

"They were the same projects," says Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Sherbanuk grew up in Sudbury, where his father worked in the mining industry. He paid his way through university by working in the mines. He came to love the rugged, utilitarian sheds that were common on mine sites.

When he described his early years to Mr. Campbell, he told stories of tagging along to visit his father's friends, when the men would congregate on greasy shop floors, surrounded by tools and equipment.

"This is the kind of thing that informs a lot when people don't think they're informing you," Mr. Campbell says. "A garage or a workshop is often another living room."

Mr. Campbell began to get a sense from Mr. Sherbanuk's stories of just what he found appealing about an urban shack.

At the same time, Mr. Sherbanuk says, the design of the house was not as important to him as the surroundings.

He was there for the skiing, the rock climbing and mountain biking on local trails.

"The house is not so much about the inside as experiencing the site," says Mr. Campbell, who found the location ideal. As he points out, it's a particularly good site, even to a designer who makes a specialty of building on beautiful pieces of countryside.

The land slopes up to a hardwood bush that protects the dwelling to the north while giving way to an expanse of open meadow to the south and leaving the living area exposed to the predominant west wind, he says.

"This site had it all."

His Finnish experience led him to suggest that the house be set right against the bush. "There is a strong tradition [there] of building on the edge of a forest."

Mr. Sherbanuk figures that Mr. Campbell could not have chosen a better location for the building on any of the 37 acres. He has views into the forest from the kitchen, sauna and bathroom, for example, and looks over the meadow from the dining area. The house is set back from the road and the land and trees obscure neighbouring houses.

The two collaborated on a house that Mr. Campbell describes as a large shed, a small shed and a tower. He imagines strangers stumbling across it decades from now and wondering what it was when it was built.

"They might wonder, 'What is this thing? An old factory? A house?'"

In a sense, it's the opposite of the "McMansion," he reckons.

The main living area has a large living and dining room with wall-to-wall windows and doors. At one end, a three-storey wall clad in raw steel looks like the head frame of a mine shaft. Mr. Campbell had Mr. Sherbanuk's passion for rock climbing in mind when he designed the wall with a shallow slope .

Mr. Sherbanuk's art collection includes a large photograph by Edward Burtynsky, purchased years before the Canadian artist gained prominence as an influential documentarian of industry.

"I've always liked the industrial landscape," says Mr. Sherbanuk, who sees beauty in mines and tailing ponds.

For years, Mr. Sherbanuk was a partner in a massive scrap-processing facility next to the steel mills in Hamilton. Now he's a broker of scrap materials.

He still has a love of steel mills. Most of the steel in the house is new, but some materials have been reclaimed. Grease pencil markings remain on the steel beams where they have been cut and numbered.

Wooden floors and the top of a custom-made table were pulled from a former warehouse belonging to the forestry company MacMillan Bloedel.

Throughout, Mr. Sherbanuk wanted an emphasis on clean, unfussy design. The bathroom vanity is fashioned out of an I-beam. The toilet roll holder is a crude hook.

"There were tons and tons of discussions about little things like this — 'what are we going to use to hold the toilet paper?'ƒ|" Mr. Campbell says. "We designed something and had it made."

As a result, "there's a rawness to it," Mr. Campbell says of the interior.

The men credit builder Leo Van Eyk with handling many of their stranger requests. Mr. Campbell points to the steel plate baseboards and says many builders would have refused to install them. Steel fabricator Albert Endeman created one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture.

The dark interior also allows the exterior to provide much of the drama.

A window in the sauna, for example, allows a view of the forest. The snow-covered trees in winter are fantastic, Mr. Sherbanuk says. "It's like another piece of art."

In the great room, doors open to a concrete patio that hovers above the land and grazes the tops of the wildflowers.

"A view of your own land is a precious thing," says Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Sherbanuk figures that his view of trees and meadows is, in many ways, more beautiful than a vista over the water.

"The beauty of this view is that it changes every season," Mr. Sherbanuk adds.

In the master bedroom, windows are carefully placed to allow the breeze to blow across the bed.

"It's like sleeping in a tent," the owner says.

Upstairs, a gym provides more views of the land through two large windows.

On the south-facing wall, Mr. Campbell put the window down low.

"It doesn't matter where you put the window in a forest — the view is the same."