Hoso

YEAR: 2023
LOCATION: Porto, Portugal
SIZE: 9350 m2
TYPE: Commission
ENGINEERING: A3R Engenharia, TEKK – Engenheiros Consultores, Fluimep – Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing Consulting, Alfaengenharia – Acoustic and Civil Engineering
LANDSCAPE: P4 – Artes e Técnicas da Paisagem
VISUALIZATIONS: Fusão
STATUS: Built

Radial rationalism and classicism
An urban void, created by the various discontinuities associated with the inner belt motorway in Porto, welcomes the tower destined for student accommodation. Starting with a square foundation and transitioning to a circular section, the building emerges from the landscape. Surrounded with important accessibility such as VCI and its proximity to Paranhos, the location is integrated between isolated orthogonal volumes facing the large-scale highways structures that cross the city. The capacity for exception goes together with its quality of regulation of disparate shapes and scales. In compositional terms, the upper and lower tops and ground floor are intended for collective uses, shared and animated by its users. In the tower column, radial apartments are developed, associated with classical linguistic and imaginary purposes.

With a concrete prefabricated structure, all the pieces are built-in fabric and assembled on-site accelerating the construction pace, reducing the waste and carbon footprint, while increasing the construction quality and precision. It took approximately one week to assemble each floor. The method and process of prefabricated construction minimize the unforeseen outcomes, which guarantees above-average quality as well as being naturally more effective in shipyard timings or reducing carbon footprint. The cylindrical volumetry allows for an optimized spatial organization and flexibility, reducing the facade and circulation areas, and solving the typological versatility in a simple way.

The modules gather the infrastructures in the centre, contiguous to the common accesses and release plans with useful mutabilities and dualities to the outside. The differently alternating height rings build a curtain ahead of the headed closing of the dwellings, providing a gallery divided into balconies. The proposed facade protects the housing units, not only from a solar but also from an acoustic point of view working as a barrier that fragments the noise coming from the roads with greater traffic. At the same time, it acts as a filter that allows privacy in each housing unit. The balconies all around its perimeter gives plasticity to the building, exploring the vertical and horizontal elements. The roof terrace is the coronation that seeks the panoramic views.