HS BUILDING

NOARQ - NO ARQUITECTOS, LDA

Short description

SHORT DESCRIPTION
HS Building is a multi-family residential housing developed in steel, consisting of a basement and 5 floors, with a total construction area of 1 904,63 m2. The land, with 3 fronts (east, south and west). The building is located at the forking of Alameda da Estação and Rua Dr. Serafim Lima.
The geometry of the land has a trapezoid configuration, with 10m large in the corner front, approximately 26m in length. The side between plots has 15.75m long.
The building footprint is 306.5 m2 and occupies almost the entire area of the plot.
The client owned a plot in the city center, located in an urban area undergoing renovation. The site was previously occupied by an old single-family house, out of place amidst the growing urban density. The brief called for a steel-frame multifamily building, reflecting the client’s industrial imaginary.
A rare opportunity to reflect and investigate steel construction!
We developed a structural scheme in steel. The composition elements follow the construction require¬ments with design objectivity. The façades are defined by a structural grid made of HEB 180 steel profiles, measuring 2.75 x 3.50 m. To ensure a fine elevation proportion and regular geometric composition in plan, the south façade was divided into two blind walls interrupted by galleries at street level. These two galleries revive the urban concept of sheltered streets typical of medieval cities. The façades are homogeneous, clear and transparent.
The building comprises 16 units, 15 of which are residential. The ground floor includes two apartments and one commercial space. The first and second floors each contain five apartments. On the east side, the third and fourth floors are progressively recessed to meet the legal height limit of three stories along Rua Dr. Serafim Lima. This regulation allowed for large terraces in the duplex apartments located on the upper floors.

INNOVATION
Innovation is not about image. It is a continuous attitude of reduction — a sustainable, regulated, and sophisticated response to the demands of our time. A building should embody intelligence and environmental maturity. It must present itself as a contemporary product, committed to urban living and the major challenges of our era, including energy efficiency.
We aimed to strike a careful balance between architectural quality, private investment, and long-term durability. Buildings today are highly technical, shaped by strict regulations, certifications, safety standards, and performance requirements against disasters like earthquakes, fires, and extreme weather. They are complex systems of installations and construction demands.
To reduce energy dependence, we used high-quality thermal insulation, effective waterproofing and ventilation system, and high-performance glass—combining safety, structural resistance, low emissivity, and high light transmission—paired with solar protection blinds. Structurally, steel was used on the façades, with reinforced concrete for slabs and outer walls. On blind elevations, we applied aluminium and phenolic resin composite panels, along with stainless-steel cladding, ensuring durability and a coherent visual identity with the reflective glass and steel structure.
We aimed to keep the finishing materials simple and honest, with the dignity of traditional architecture: exposed concrete for exterior pavements, plastered walls in living areas, microcement in bathrooms and kitchens, and solid eucalyptus for the wood flooring in the social areas.

BENEFITS
An architectural idea cannot exist outside its time. The best architecture responds to the essential concerns of its era. Today, we face demands for efficiency, safety, inclusiveness, and sustainability. Governments, authorities, and clients no longer accept solutions that lack security, thermal efficiency, solar control, energy sustainability, ergonomic design, or acoustic comfort. In short, no proposal is acceptable without regulatory, social, and environmental accountability.
With increasingly constrained budgets and strict technical requirements, there is no way for formal excess. We believe that excellence lies in appropriate scale, material integrity, and authenticity. Only what is essential is reasonable. Only transparent integrity can withstand the unpredictability of the future and the test of time.
Steel remains linked to an unfulfilled modernist ideal — radical, precise, elegant. It is structural and vectorial, without mass or need for cladding. It is self-sufficient and transparent. Since the 19th century, this image of skeletal, refined metal architecture has endured in our collective imagination. It resists to the excess and embraces the transparency. In that sense, steel liberates architecture.
To build in steel, today, is not about novelty. It is a return to the modernist principles of simplicity and truth in construction. It invites reflection on what architecture should be: essential, intelligent, and resilient. To design and to build with glass and steel can be a critical reflection on traditional in-situ construction methods.