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Architect Michael Poris expanded the kitchen's opening to give the dining room a more expansive feel while
containing it with beams and molding painted a rich mahogany. A dining table, whose natural wood warms
the darker framework, was crafted from planks reclaimed from a Detroit factory; Gage planed them down and
brightened them for food service. The legs of the table were modified from a 20-foot grain auger. Sockets were
added to the frame of an enormous 1950s Christmas bell and transformed into a chandelier. Industrial tooling
boxes from the 1940s were assembled to create a sideboard.

Salvaged
architectural
and industrial
remnants find a
warm welcome
in a Birmingham
home.

Lynne Konstantin I Design Writer
Brett Mountain I Photographer

a

B

eginning life as a working farmhouse early in the 1900s,
then divided into a duplex (replete with two sets of stairs)
during the Depression, this home close to downtown
Birmingham has been restructured into a still-rustic, uniquely
warm, inspiring and play-friendly haven. The Jewish homeowner,
who harbors a passion for textural rough-hewn architectural rem-
nants and industrial scraps of metal along with the sense of history
they emanate, assembled a team who understood his aesthetic and
ran with it.
Owner of Birmingham's McIntosh Poris Associates, architect and
designer Michael Poris, who also is Jewish, holds degrees from the
University of Michigan and Yale University. He created a livable,
functional and light-strewn space that blends seamlessly with the
mix of raw and rustic details that Richard Gage and Marisa Gaggino
(who happen to be husband and wife) carved out. Along with
the homeowner, Gaggino, owner of Heritage Co. II Architectural
Artifacts in Royal Oak, scoured her inventory and the country for
decorative salvage. She then often handed the pieces over to Gage,
an architectural sculptor and owner of Richard Gage Design Studio
in Hazel Park, to repurpose them into functional (and safe) pieces
of luminous beauty.
"[This homeowner] put together a team of professionals that
understood his design requirements and personality and could
collaborate to push a concept to its highest end, without egos
getting in the way" says Gage. "The level of trust, daring, boldness,
artistic expression and belief in the creative process that he
exhibited made it a really rewarding and fun project to work on:'

❑

Turn-of-the-century oak freight-elevator
doors define a vestibule in the entry foyer.
Architectural sculptor Gage machined brackets
and supports to replicate the original hardware
to mount the panels and provide an interior
ledge that doubles as counter space.

Do you have a home you'd like to share with the community? Contact Lynne Konstantin at Ikonstantin©thejewishnews.com .

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July 11 • 2013

JN