• Home Tours
    • Dwell Exclusives
    • Before & After
    • Budget Breakdown
    • Renovations
    • Prefab
    • Video Tours
    • Travel
    • Real Estate
    • Vacation Rentals
  • Photos
    • Editor’s Picks
    • Bathrooms
    • Kitchens
    • Staircases
    • Outdoor
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • All Issues
  • Shop
    • Shopping Guides
    • Furniture
    • Lighting & Fans
    • Decor & More
    • Kitchen & Dining
    • Bath & Bed
  • Projects
    • Editor’s Picks
    • Modern
    • Midcentury
    • Industrial
    • Farmhouses
    • Scandinavian
    • Find a Pro
    • Sourcebook
  • Collections
    • Editor’s Picks
    • Shopping
    • Recently Saved
    • Planning
SubscribeSign In
  • FILTER

    • All Photos
    • Editor’s Picks
    • exterior
  • Building Type

    • House(15)
    • Apartment(125)
    • Cabin(1)
    • Boathouse
    • Shed
    • Beach House
    • Shipping Container(12)
    • Prefab(3)
    • Farmhouse
    • Mid-Century(3)
    • Ranch
    • Barn
    • Camper
    • Airstream
    • Tent
    • Treehouse
    • Tiny Home
    • Small Home(2)
    • ADU
  • Roof Material

    • Shingles(6)
    • Metal(13)
    • Tile(5)
    • Green(2)
  • Siding Material

    • Wood(26)
    • Concrete(19)
    • Metal(21)
    • Vinyl(2)
    • Stucco(6)
    • Brick(21)
    • Stone(12)
    • Glass(5)
    • Green(2)
  • RoofLine

    • Flat(57)
    • Shed(2)
    • A-Frame
    • Gable(7)
    • Butterfly
    • Hipped(1)
    • Gambrel(2)
    • Mansard
    • Saltbox
    • Curved(1)
    • Dome
    • Sawtooth
All Photos/exterior/building type : apartment

Exterior Apartment Design Photos and Ideas

The house’s dark exterior helps it blend in with the rest of the street.
The complex is set in an area zoned for low-level, high-density housing and is surrounded by greenery.
The new building (at right) utilizes traditional forms and materials, but declares its modernity with asymmetrical windows an an exterior shutter with oversized graphics.
Both B2 Lofts buildings stretch across their small block, and thus face the street on two sides. MacKay-Lyons is especially fond of the interstitial space between buildings, clad in factory-style windows.
High Street House is a multi-level co-living/co-working space occupying the middle section of a historic brick building in West London. The co-working lounge and studio is sited on the ground level, just beyond the floor-to-ceiling glazed wall that is trimmed in a vibrant shade of red. City Studio, the apartment currently available for rent, is perched on the top floor of the building.
Tsai Design was able to double the home’s footprint via a rear addition that includes two bedrooms and two bathrooms. (The original home was 645 square feet, and the extension added 614 square feet.) The firm then introduced plenty of natural light and three separate exterior decks that add up to 270 square feet of outdoor space.
After 15 years of living in a one-bedroom flat above their specialty violin shop in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, the owners were tired of trekking downstairs to their workshop in order to use the building’s only bathroom.
Jonathan Tuckey doesn’t so much whisper to old buildings as listen to them. Known for his innovative updates to historic homes, the British architectural designer was the obvious choice when his friends Al and Francesca Breach decided to bring new life to Nossenhaus, a centuries-old stone-and-timber structure they’d bought in the Swiss village of Andermatt.
Designed in the 1950s by British firm Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon, the Barbican Estate in East London is one of the largest examples of the brutalist style. Construction extended through the ’70s, and the complex was officially opened by the Queen in 1982. Today, it remains highly coveted for its unique aesthetic and convenient location.
The herringbone pattern in the screen casts a play of shadows depending on the time of day.
The privacy screen is composed of timber battens painted black and mounted on a steel frame.
A massive oak tree is the focal point of the communal entry courtyard. The apartments were originally designed by Harwell Hamilton Harris for Thomas Cranfill, an English
professor at The University of Texas at Austin courtyard.
The mezzanine has rooftop access through large, south-oriented glazed doors. A steel awning offers shade to the mezzanine level during summer months, and the inside face is clad with plywood to visually extend the interior space outward.
Studio Rick Joy’s latest project, a five-story apartment building with two separate units, is set on a quiet street in the thriving, upscale neighborhood of Polanco, in the heart of Mexico City. It’s a departure from the firm’s usual work—the Tucson-based studio tends towards poetically minimalist homes surrounded by sweeping natural landscapes. In Tennyson 205, the firm successfully instills a sense of place and greenery within an infill project set in a bustling city.
Julie and Kevin Seidel were looking to create a salon as much as a home when they renovated a former tire warehouse in the SoMa section of San Francisco.
This eye-catching villa in the Netherlands, designed by Next Architects, proves that you can go big and go home as well. While some homes feature hints of color, the Villa van Vijven structure garners well-deserved attention thanks to its warm orange facade that is meant to mimic the tiled rooftops of Holland’s country buildings. The orange of the exterior also carries over into the communal entrance beneath the building, offset by natural elements such as stones adjacent to the entryway.
The sunshine-yellow spiral staircase stands out against the pale tone of the brick facade.
The brick-clad rooftop apartment on Mile End Road in East London features a vibrant yellow spiral staircase that links the upper and the lower terrace.
The apartments are located in a building in Old Montreal that dates from 1895. The renovation was complicated on many levels, as the building code has a number of requirements that are hard to accomplish in a 125-year-old structure.
A variety of planters, boxes, and hanging vines add greenery and softness to the exposed concrete structure.
Designed by Heller Manus Architects, 181 Fremont Street is located in San Francisco's newly coined 'East Cut' neighborhood and soars 700 feet tall.
A look at the exterior, which also plays with light, shadow, and negative space.
Plans for 168 Plymouth Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn, are comprised of two interconnected buildings that once served as a factory and distribution center for Masury & Sons Paint Works. Sales are now open for a mix of converted townhomes and lofts, as well as modern penthouses.
The eight-story apartment tower's glass and concrete facade lets in copious natural light.
A contemporary apartment tower rises behind the restored townhouse at 55 Monterrey Avenue in Mexico City's Colonia Roma neighborhood.
Alex Gil and Claudia DeSimio created a duplex in an apartment building where they’d been renting for years in Brooklyn, New York, and set to work gutting the interior and adding a new rooftop addition clad in panels of Cor-Ten steel.
Walden 7 is one of Taller de Arquitectura’s pioneering housing projects, designed to address the problems of modern city living—in particular, how to balance communal spaces with privacy. Located just outside Barcelona, the complex features five interior courtyards and 446 residences spread across 18 towers of 14 stories each. The towers are modular, but they are arranged in an organic, unsystematic form and connected via communal spaces and bridges to create distinct identities.
The cross laminated timber (CLT) and steel structure was prefabricated, speeding up the building process to just three weeks.
The project's prime, corner lot real estate dictated the organization of the separate living quarters. The main house's driveway and entryway, for example, are located on Maude Street, giving permanent residents a sense of privacy.
Spacious windows and a slotted facade provide curbside appeal at every angle.
Maude Street House by Murray Legge
With four levels and five private terraces, the penthouse cantilevers over Beekman Place in Manhattan.
The five floors beneath the penthouse comprise three private residences, each of which retains the hallmarks of Rudolph's signature style.
The Apartment by Tina Seidenfaden Busck is located in the charming Christianshavn district of old Copenhagen and has uninterrupted views overlooking the canal and the spire of Our Savior’s Church.
Balconies on the south facade.
One of the project's goals is to revitalize the community.
The apartment takes the form of a singular prefab structure.
Each unit has 11.5-foot-high ceilings, expansive floor-to-ceiling windows, and outdoor terraces.
The apartment building has an organic curving form.
The 73,195-square-foot prefab building hosts 66 new apartments.
A cobblestone street in Sambuca, Sicily
The ground floor entrance.
The Nate exterior.
The surrounding hills of Montmartre inspired the alternate tread staircase that SABO introduced to the young fashion designer’s apartment.
Two formerly separate levels are linked and combined into a double-height volume in this 1,464-square-foot apartment in Barcelona, Spain.
Walden 7's unsystematic layout offers an alternative to conventional apartment blocks.
Diagonal cuts are mirrored across the facade, creating a rhythmic pattern of material and void.
Circulation platforms weave above the open courtyard space.
Large cuts in the outer walls of the shipping containers create a geometric pattern of glazed openings. At night, the openings create a patterned facade that is both solid and transparent.
The two building masses join like a hinge at the narrow end of the site. The solid masses are broken only by the exterior circulation routes. The complex name, DRIVELINES, is painted onto the end facade.
123Next

About

  • About
  • Contact Us
  • FAQ
  • Editorial Standards
  • Careers
  • Advertise
  • Media Kit

Subscriptions

  • Subscribe to Dwell
  • Gift Dwell Magazine
  • Dwell+ Subscription Help
  • Magazine Subscription Help

Professionals

  • Sell Your Products
  • Contribute to Dwell
  • Promote Your Work

Follow

  • @dwellmagazine on Instagram
  • @dwellmagazine on Pinterest
  • @dwell on Facebook
  • @dwell on Twitter
  • @dwell on Flipboard
  • Dwell RSS

© 2026 Recurrent Ventures Inc. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • DMCA
  • Sitemap
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information