Strip out the interior completely without touching a single column, and return the terrace to its original opening in the façade. Those two decisions resolved the renovation of an 89.19 m² flat (built area) on Calle Duquesa de Parcent, in the Soho district of Málaga city, which came with its original partition walls chopping up the floor area and its terrace absorbed into the interior years earlier. Designed in 2021; works completed in December the same year.
The brief: a flat renovation in Soho, Málaga
The commission was formalised on 11 February 2021 and covered everything: technical design, visualisations, a blind bill of quantities, permit processing, and site management with a comparison of tenders. The first thing we drew was not the final flat. It was four of them: four alternative layouts on the table, which the owners reviewed on 17 February. That is how almost all of the studio’s renovations begin, with several options competing against each other before one becomes the project.
The starting point was 89.19 m² of built area according to the Land Registry — 89 m² in the cadastre — and 74.80 m² of usable floor space inside. The inherited layout divided that area into small rooms linked by a corridor. The renovation does not change the built area at any stage: all the room for manoeuvre lay inside.
Stripping out the interior without touching a column
Every internal partition wall was demolished. Every one, without touching columns or any other structural element: the project includes an express declaration that the building’s structure is not affected. That document is what allows the works to be processed through a declaración responsable — a self-certified notification to Málaga City Council — instead of a major works building permit (licencia de obra mayor). The moment the structure is touched, that route closes and the timeline changes scale.
With the inside empty, half the flat went into a single room: 37.94 of the 74.80 usable square metres are living room, dining area and kitchen in one continuous space. The main bedroom, 14.68 m², was given an en-suite bathroom. The second one, 10.84 m², is closed off with movable partitions built into the flat’s party walls; when it isn’t needed, it opens up and becomes part of the living room. That is the room that lets a two-bedroom flat work as a one-and-a-half-bedroom flat, depending on the day. The aim was for 89 m² in an apartment block to live like a house. When the brief is literally a house, as at Casa Colinas, the problem is reversed: you have to organise floor area, not manufacture it.
The strip-out also took care of what nobody sees. All party walls were dry-lined with independent studwork and the new partitions were built dry, in 98 mm plasterboard on an acoustic isolation strip. In a city-centre block, sound insulation from the neighbours gets sorted while the walls are open, or it doesn’t get sorted at all.
On that base the finishes stay in one family: wood-effect porcelain floor tiles at 25×150 cm, oak for internal joinery and fitted furniture, micro-cement in the bathrooms, perimeter indirect lighting, upholstered headboards, wardrobes flush with the wall line, and matt black taps and ironmongery. External joinery is thermally broken aluminium, motorised, and the home automation (Zennio) was specified within the project itself — schematics and drawings included.
Putting the terrace back on the façade
The building’s original terraces had gradually been absorbed into the flats, one by one, and this one too. The project reopens this flat’s terrace in its original position: 4.90 m² facing Calle Duquesa de Parcent, bringing the total usable area to 79.70 m². Reinstating an opening that once existed is much easier to defend than inventing a new one.
It is not a free gesture. The plot is zoned PEPRI Conjunto Histórico — Málaga’s historic-centre conservation area — under the city’s 2011 general plan (PGOU), and the project devotes a full section to demonstrating compliance with the guidelines for work on façades and roofs in the Conjunto Histórico and PEPRI-Centro. The building has no architectural listing, but the façade does have rules: the terrace is reinstated without altering the pattern of openings or the building’s appearance. In central Málaga, planning comes before design: the same order of work as for the tourist flat in the MOSS Building, also in the historic centre.
The street provides the rest: the river, the Centre Pompidou and the Ensanche Heredia within walking distance, in the arts district that was once the Barrio de los Ángeles.
From tender to final works certificate
The bill of quantities was prepared blind and put out to tender with two contractors, who priced exactly the same items. We prepared the comparison between the bidders, and the successful contractor’s offer went through three successive revisions between 2 and 28 June 2021. The contract was signed with EMIN, S.L. on 22 June and work started on the 30th.
The renovation also included an energy upgrade under the Spanish PREE scheme: improvements to the thermal envelope (façade and windows) and the services replaced with an air-source heat pump feeding underfloor heating, fan coils and radiators. Energy performance certificates were issued for the initial and the achieved condition, demonstrating the minimum 10% reduction in final energy consumption required for each measure. One honest note: the building work finished in December 2021, while the scheme’s file remained open until March 2022, including a request from the authorities answered with two annexes. The house arrives well before the paperwork does.
Scale changes the problem too. Here the work was done flat by flat; in the Pintor Sorolla 15-17 rehabilitation, in Limonar Bajo, the brief was a different one. The contractual deadline for these works was 15 September 2021, with the aluminium windows exempted until 30 September because of that year’s global materials shortage. The final works certificate is dated December 2021 and signed by both architects: around six months on site. The seven images on this page are the studio’s own visualisations, produced in three rounds between March and May 2021; the photographic record of the finished flat is the one that accompanies the final certificate.
If you own a flat in central Málaga with its original layout and want to know what can be done without touching the structure, write to us. That is exactly the conversation we have on the first visit.
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Project data
- Typology: Full interior renovation of a flat in a multi-family building, with a new layout and the façade terrace reinstated
- Use: Residential · dwelling
- Location: Calle Duquesa de Parcent · Soho district · Málaga city
- Units: 1 dwelling
- Built area: 89.19 m² (74.80 m² usable indoors + 4.90 m² terrace = 79.70 m² usable in total). The renovation does not change the built area
- Programme: Entrance hall, open kitchen continuous with the living and dining area, master bedroom with en-suite bathroom, secondary bedroom with movable partitions, secondary bathroom with utility area, and terrace on the façade
- Design year: 2021
- Construction year: 2021
- Status: Built. Works completed in December 2021, with a final works certificate (Certificado Final de Obra). The images on this page are the studio’s own visualisations
- Client: Private client
- Klic services: Technical design, visualisations, blind bill of quantities, permit documentation and processing via declaración responsable, site management with comparison of tenders, and PREE scheme documentation
- Building contractor: EMIN, S.L. (awarded the contract after a two-bid tender)
- Site management: Klic Arquitectos
- Structure: No structural intervention. Declaration that the building’s structure is not affected
- Interior design: Klic Arquitectos
- Photography: Photographic record for the final works certificate (December 2021) and project visualisations, both produced in-house
- Team: Juan Alejandro Goñi Uriarte, architect, COA Málaga reg. no. 1206, and Ruth Buján Varela, architect, COA Málaga reg. no. 1333
