Contemporary Apartment with Rounded Balcony Frames

Contemporary style read through a white, rounded-frame facade

The building in this image shows the contemporary style in its softer, organic register. Instead of the hard orthogonal grid associated with mid-century modernism, the facade is built from rounded-corner portal frames stacked in two and three levels. Each frame reads as a thick white band that turns the corner in a continuous curve, so the elevation looks extruded rather than assembled. This is the current mainstream of contemporary residential design: white monolithic surfaces, deep openings, planting carried into the structure and no applied historical ornament.

How it differs from minimalism and from modernism

Minimalist exteriors usually reduce the facade to a flat plane with cut openings. The contemporary approach here does the opposite, it gives the opening a physical thickness of roughly a slab depth and uses that thickness as the main visual event. Modernist buildings of the twentieth century would have expressed the structural frame and thin slab edges. Here the frame is generous, radiused and sculptural, closer to the plastic tradition of Mediterranean and Latin American concrete work, but delivered with contemporary render and glazing systems.

Materials and surface logic

The palette is short, which is typical for contemporary exteriors. Its interest comes from how few materials are used and how precisely they meet.

• White render or mineral plaster over concrete or blockwork, applied with a fine even texture. The absence of joints, panel lines and drip details makes the volumes read as single masses. This is what allows the curved corners to work visually.

• Floor-to-ceiling glazing set back inside each frame, with slim dark aluminium mullions. The dark frames read as shadow, which pushes the white surfaces forward.

• Planting as a facade material. Continuous planters at the balcony edge, trailing species that soften the horizontal band, and potted plants placed on the parapet. The green is not landscaping around the building, it is part of the elevation.

• Light stone or large-format porcelain paving on the plaza, laid in a wide grid with tight joints, plus a shallow water surface at the foreground that mirrors the facade.

• Timber and warm tones appear only in recessed ground-floor soffits and interiors, glimpsed through the glazing.

Spatial and architectural character

Balconies treated as outdoor rooms

The massing is organised as a set of offset boxes rather than a single block. Frames shift laterally and vertically, so some balconies sit proud of the wall and others recede into a two-storey void. Each frame encloses a private outdoor room with a floor, ceiling and two side walls. That enclosure gives shade, wind protection and visual privacy between neighbouring units, which a plain cantilevered balcony cannot provide.

Depth, shadow and light

The design depends on sunlight. Deep reveals throw curved shadows across the render, and those shadows change the reading of the facade through the day. The white surface acts as a reflector, bouncing indirect light into the recessed glazing behind. Under overcast skies the same facade flattens, so orientation matters in this style.

Ground level and public plaza

The lower level is more open than the upper floors, with recessed entrances, glazed lobbies and columns pulled back from the facade line. Planting beds and tropical species mediate between paving and building. The result is a permeable base that supports the pedestrian activity visible in the image.

Current directions in contemporary exteriors

Three tendencies visible in this project are common in current practice. First, the return of curvature, radiused corners and arch-like openings after a decade of sharp-edged white boxes. Second, integrated planters designed with the structure rather than added later, with irrigation and drainage built into the slab edge. Third, low-contrast palettes where a single off-white tone carries the whole composition and colour comes from vegetation, sky and water. Lighting follows the same restraint, usually recessed linear fittings in soffits that wash the underside of each frame at night.

When the contemporary style is chosen

This style suits climates with strong sun, where deep frames and shaded terraces have a practical function. It fits urban infill sites and resort or coastal developments where a light facade and generous outdoor space are commercially valuable. It also works when a client wants a building that reads as current without depending on expensive cladding, since render, glass and planting are relatively economical.

Use areas

• Low-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings, where the stacked frames articulate individual units.

• Boutique hotels and serviced apartments, where the terrace becomes a room feature.

• Private villas, using a single frame as the main garden opening.

• Clinics, studios and small offices that need daylight with solar control.

• Campus and cultural buildings where a plaza fronts the entrance.

Prompt examples

• Contemporary four-storey apartment building, white plaster facade with radiused portal frames of varying depth, floor-to-ceiling glazing set back behind, continuous planters with trailing greenery, evening light, warm linear soffit lighting, eye-level view from a paved plaza

• Contemporary organic villa exterior, single storey, one oversized rounded frame opening onto a shaded terrace, off-white micro-cement walls, olive trees and gravel ground cover, hard midday sun with curved shadows, three-quarter view

• Contemporary residential block seen from a reflecting pool, staggered white volumes with rounded balcony frames, dark slim aluminium mullions, tropical planting at ground level, calm water mirroring the facade, soft overcast light, symmetrical composition

• Contemporary courtyard housing, white rounded-frame balconies facing an internal garden, timber soffits inside the recesses, climbing plants on the upper levels, low afternoon sun, wide-angle view from the courtyard floor