ARCHITECTURAL  DESIGNER John Franklin joins Old World Building Group in its mission to bring the finest custom-built luxury residences to the hills and valleys of bucolic Bucks County. Franklin's forte is creating residential spaces in tune with his clients’ desire for European style, unconventional approaches and individualistic results.

Tucked into private enclaves of the Delaware Valley landscape, homes with the Franklin touch often resemble charming European-style estates, villas plucked from a Grecian coast or a Tuscan hillside. "We’re building more than a house," Franklin says. "We’re creating an experience. I don’t have an inventory of predesigned styles. I’m a firm believer that each piece of property has its own topography of design."

Impatient with normative architectural formulizations that he believes stifle creativity, Franklin developed his own niche—a style that includes the generous use of archways and wrought-ironwork, columns and capitals, balustrades and building materials from old homes, mills, churches and barns in America and Europe. And it embraces the distinctive fresco-style plaster wall finishes that he developed over time that yield pleasing patinas that are comfortable to the eye and have a sensuous, timeworn texture.

“It isn’t as much about creating the structure as it is about shaping the space within it,” he observes. Explaining his customer-centric source for design, he says "I work from an intuitive level." Like the finest classical artisans, Franklin raises superior craftsmanship to another plane, beyond technical proficiency, to deducing a client's wants and needs and integrating these into the final result.

"The normal order of thinking in architecture is very staccato—square, straight, plumb, abrupt,” Franklin says." "I tend to look at things as musical movements, and I incorporate that into my design. My architecture is more legato—smooth, flowing and sweet, like tender violin music. You orchestrate an interior through the softness of the colors, the gentle transitions, the arches, lighting, scale and contrast. It’s a composition. The beauty of architecture is the way it flows, It’s almost organic."

 Franklin-designed homes are architectural symphonies for the senses, romantic and compelling, elegant and ageless. John Franklin's design skills and imagination are integral to the Old World Building Group—where you create your own legacy. Residential architecture has to come from emotion because you’re dealing with that person’s home. It is their release, and their refuge, it should be a soft, comfortable and soothing place, a legato place in their life.   <<-Back