Polymath is committed to creating truly restorative buildings and communities.
Polymath is a collection of ventures dedicated to harvesting blight to create beauty. Our development arm deconstructs vacant and condemned pre-war structures and then uses those materials to rehab existing or create new sustainable developments. Provenance Home is our furniture manufacturing and retail arm that takes our salvaged materials and creates spectacular home furnishings. Polymath is dedicated to creating buildings that are rooted in history and place and are built to higher standard that restores the community and environment around it.
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“After 30 years of neglect, two century-old Ann Arbor homes are being salvaged, nail-by-nail, for use in a new commercial net-zero energy building. How cool is that?
Tired, derelict homes come down to make way for bigger, newer buildings all the time. It’s an common enough story in and around Ann Arbor’s downtown. This week, however, there’s a development project that’s added a new twist, making use of the old to create the best of the new.”
We have a true passion for place.
At Polymath, we don't want to just rebuild our cities, we want to reimagine them. Our buildings tell the story of who we are, where we came from, and where we hope to go. Our buildings look to nature for inspiration, to history for wisdom and to our community for resilience and integrity. We choose to create life-enhancing buildings that operate as elegantly and efficiently as nature's design.
Partners
Nathan S. Brown
Founder / President
Nathan, like the company he founded, aspires to the polymath ideal - an expert of many facets. He is a military man, entrepreneur, carpenter, minimalist, consultant, adventurer and conservationist.
A former Army Major with expertise in strategy and operations, Nathan’s military record contains numerous awards and accolades including qualifications as an Army Ranger and Senior-Rated Jumpmaster. He served two tours in Iraq and most recently served as Chief of Operations for a 4000 paratrooper Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Nathan returned to his home state of Michigan in 2009. He attended the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and Ford School of Public Policy receiving dual Masters Degrees in Business and Public Policy. After returning, he fell in love with the architecture in Detroit and founded Polymath and Provenance as a way to reclaim as much of the existing pre-war building stock and salvage/re-purpose as many materials as possible as part of on-going revitalization efforts.
More about Nate
Scott Brown
Partner
Scott is a construction management professional with over 40 years in the industry. A carpenter by trade, Scott has been several decades of construction project management. He has built everything from custom single family homes large multi-family apartment buildings to 60,000 SF commercial buildings to large municipal projects including schools, power plants and water treatment facilities.
A strict conservationist, Scott is dedicated to salvaging and using all the “treasures” that Detroit architecture has to offer. When not building, he can be found tending to his organic garden, or out on the lake enjoying the beautiful Michigan weather.
More about Scott
Contact us.
(313) 405-6261
Polymath Development
Corktown, Detroit
Michigan, USA