Franko - LaFratta Construction works with Richmond's best architects and designers to create visually stimulating interior and exterior spaces. Below are some recent projects that have been featured in various publications and/or in other mediums such as art galleries, designer houses and local home tours.

HomeStyle, August 2001. A photographer and his wife enlist some of the city's finest artisans to create a visually charged and quite delectable house in the Museum District. The Brauer's strikingly contemporary kitchen manages to raise the pulse of everyone who enters, and that's before they've tasted the haute cuisine that's dished up daily from the massive Thermadore range and spread out upon the trapezoidal glass-and-steel table.

Matt Smith, partner with Franko - LaFratta Construction, served as general contractor for the project. As with most renovations, this one had its idiosyncrasies: "We were moving load-bearing, old brick walls and recreating openings where they weren't, and closing in other ones. Being an old Fan house it was more difficult to run lines and vents because of the lack of crawl space and attic space. A lot of contactors shy away from this, and that's our niche in this market."

Franko - LaFratta Construction crafted cabinetry and built-ins with a lustrous mix of ash and yew woods. In the kitchen, brick walls give way to large expanses of glass, lending an inside-out feeling…

"I saw their vision and I knew that I could place myself there." Lee [Brauer] says, "Even so, when it was totally done, it went beyond my expectations. That's what makes these guys so great-they're able to give it even more. I wanted them to have the freedom. It was their art and creativity that I was looking for.

"We love the kitchen. It's the focus of ur whole lifestyle," Linda Brauer says. "Both Lee and I are cooks, and all of the appliances are chosen with cooking in mind. We read cookbooks like novels." Italian soapstone countertops blend with the case-concrete bar and glass tile mosaic back-splash. Refrigerated drawer units make the kitchen easy to work in, and scraps drop neatly into the European-style compost unit set into the countertop.

Photos by Stephen Salpukas

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Inform Magazine, Spring 2001

"The Evolving Modern Office". This renovation of an early 20th century industrial building into the offices for SMBW Architects grew from an effort to establish an intellectually charged setting to encourage creativity and invention. In conceptual terms, the architect's approach was to use materials already present in the building to create a new formal language. The tension between old and new, neutrality and color, and rigor and improvisation were developed as perceptual devices. Conventional construction measures governed the decision-making process during design. Openings were made in an existing party wall that divided the building into two in order to consolidate the spaces into a single floor plate. Defined spaces such as the reception area, meeting rooms, administrative offices, and library on the east end of the building are contrasted by the free-flowing open plan of the studio space to the west. Existing oak floors were refinished and the interior structure was whitewashed to take advantage of the natural light that fills the space. The custom-designed workstations -- which were approached as an exercise in expressing the nature of materials such as metal studs, Baltic birch plywood and homasote -- were inspired by the furniture of sculptor Donald Judd.

Further review of this article can be found in the Inform Magazine, Spring 2001, a brochure published by the National Building Museum as well as in a catalog published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Click here to visit Inform Magazine online.

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© Franko - LaFratta Construction, Inc. 2008