Andrade Morettin's Essential Architecture will be built in the city of Recife, Brazil, located in the state of Pernambuco. Recife has its history as a port city along tropical, white-sand beaches lined with palm trees, and named for the coral reefs that line the coast. It is a fast-growing urban area that has been called the "Venice of Brazil&quot because it is dissected by numerous waterways and connected by many bridges. The proposed demonstration building site, called Morado Recife Imperial, is located in the southwest of the city about 7 km from the ‘downtown core' in the Jiquia district.

The master plan for the development of the site is to construct 125 residential apartments for low income families. Around 4,000 dwellings are currently planned for the 333,000 m² site that has been divided into 21 sub-areas, at least one of which will be occupied by buildings modelled after Essential Architecture. The site's soil conditions are poor, consisting of soft, silty clay overlying fine to medium sands. The low bearing capacity of the soil means that, for traditional (heavy) construction, deep or piled foundations would make multi-storey buildings prohibitively expensive for low income housing. Consequently, an important part of this location's demonstration is to show the benefits of lightweight steel construction for building on such a challenging site.