Almost the whole house on a single floor, laid across three levels cut from the hillside, and upstairs only the main bedroom with its dressing room and bathroom. Casa Matcha is a single-family home in Almogía (Málaga), in the Fuente Amarga area, built across two adjoining unbuilt plots that were combined into one. The ground fell away in a slope, so the site had to be tamed before anything could be drawn: three levels, retaining walls and rock fill. The design and site supervision are by Klic Arquitectos.
The brief: two plots and a sloping site
The first visit to the plots was in 2015: two adjoining plots in Fuente Amarga, neither of them built on. The first thing we did was measure them. The cadastre said 7,500 m²; the topographic survey came back with 7,883 m². On a sloping site, a difference of nearly 400 m² is not a minor detail — it changes where the house can sit and how much retaining wall has to be built.
The brief was a two-storey house with a garage, a pool and a tennis court. The report for the basic design and construction project was signed in Málaga and certified (visado) by the College of Architects of Málaga.
Site constraints
The geotechnical survey set the rules before any decision about form: excavate to a level of -2.00 m and improve the ground before laying the foundations. On site, that improvement was carried out with the MIXPILE system, which comes with its own technical approval document (DIT 576R-17) and its own structural calculations.
On the improved ground sits a reinforced concrete raft, with a ventilated slab at ground floor, concrete columns and a waffle slab at first floor. The slope was dealt with in stages: concrete retaining walls and rock fill to form the three levels the plot works on today. The house does not fight the hillside; it settles into it in steps.
The proposal
The decision was easy to state and rather less easy to fit: put almost the whole house on the ground floor. Of 319.89 m² of enclosed floor area, 238.09 m² sits at ground level and 81.80 m² above it. Upstairs are the main bedroom (24.75 m²), its dressing room (7.95 m²) and its bathroom (6.80 m²), with the whole house and the landscape below.
Daytime living is concentrated downstairs: a 42.58 m² living and dining room, a 17.16 m² kitchen and a 36.12 m² games room, alongside the covered porch and the terraces, with 26 m² of indoor parking. Beyond the main volume sit the garage (30.52 m²), the plant room (20.70 m²), the outdoor pool (95.75 m² of water surface) and a 260.35 m² tennis court. On a plot of nearly eight thousand square metres, the programme is spread across separate volumes rather than piled into a single block.
The construction process
The setting-out verification record was signed in 2019, and with it construction began. The first stage was all earthworks, the concrete retaining wall, rock fill, backfilling and ground improvement — the months that never appear in a photograph, and the ones that decide whether or not the house sits on sound ground.
Then came the foundation raft, the columns and the slabs, and later the roof, which was the subject of the last documented site visit. The house is still under construction.
Gallery
Project data
- Typology: Detached single-family home, new build, two storeys, with garage, outdoor pool and tennis court
- Use: Residential — single-family home
- Location: Fuente Amarga, Almogía (Málaga, Andalusia), Montes de Málaga
- Design year: 2015
- Construction year: 2019
- Status: Under construction
- Built area: 319.89 m² enclosed (238.09 m² ground floor, 81.80 m² first floor); 285.10 m² usable
- Plot area: 7,883 m² by topographic survey (7,500 m² per the cadastre), from two adjoining plots combined
- Units: 1 detached home
- Client: Private client, building their own home
- Klic services: Basic design and construction project, and site supervision
- Team: Klic Arquitectos — Juan Alejandro Goñi Uriarte, architect: project author and site director
Other projects by Klic Arquitectos
If you are interested in our residential architecture in inland Málaga, take a look at our Villa Venetta, in Cártama, in the Guadalhorce Valley, or our projects in Benahavís.
