Eight homes stepping down the hillside, each on its own platform, and a pool set where the ground opens up. Edificio Templa is designed for a trapezoidal corner plot of 1,026.21 m² in the upper part of Montemar, where the gradient steepens towards the east. The site is zoned Ciudad Jardín, where the local plan caps floorspace at 0.83 m² for every m² of land. This multi-family building in Montemar does not level the ground: it steps the dwellings and lets the slope set the order of the scheme.
Site constraints
The plot sits high in Montemar. It is a corner site, trapezoidal, and the gradient steepens towards the east. Under the Torremolinos local development plan (PGOU, finally adopted in October 1996) it is classified CJ-3a Ciudad Jardín. That allows 0.83 m² of floorspace for every m² of land, and no more than 50 % site coverage. With eight dwellings, parking and a communal pool in the brief, the margins were thin from the outset.
They then got thinner. A municipal alignment procedure — expediente de alineaciones ALI/1/18, the council formally redrawing the street boundary — took the plot from 1,058.18 m² to 1,026.21 m². The scheme had to be re-set against the new line. The design statement puts it plainly: the original approach was not changed, only adjusted to the new boundary.
The adjusted scheme uses 808.75 m² of countable floorspace, a ratio of 0.788 against the 0.83 permitted. Site coverage lands at 49.04 % (503.26 m²) against the 50 % cap. That leaves roughly 43 m² of floorspace unused. On a site this size, it is running things close.
The eight dwellings, one by one
Eight dwellings, A to H, each sitting on a platform at its own level. The waffle slabs step down with the ground rather than against it. Dwellings A and B are entered straight off street level; the other six from the vertical circulation core and its lift. That lift is what makes an accessible route workable on a slope like this.
The mix runs from two to four bedrooms, all with a living-dining room and two bathrooms. H is the largest, at 114.57 m² of internal usable area (superficie útil, measured inside the walls), with four bedrooms and a private stair up to its own roof terrace. B has a private stair down to the level below. The rest of the programme is 16 parking spaces, one of them a designated accessible bay, and 8 storage rooms. The communal pool has 26.00 m² of water, 79.31 m² of garden and a 1.20 m paved surround.
Materials and construction
The structure is what allows the stepping: a reinforced concrete raft, a perimeter earth-retaining wall, and columns carrying waffle slabs set at different levels.
The façade is a cavity wall: an outer leaf of perforated clay brick, a closed cavity, and an independent inner lining of mineral wool insulation and two layers of plasterboard. It is rendered in cement mortar and finished in white pliolite paint. Windows are thermally broken aluminium with double glazing and solar control, and the shutters are insulated aluminium, motorised. Inside, AC-3 engineered timber flooring in the hall, living rooms, bedrooms and corridors, and porcelain tiling in bathrooms and kitchens.
One decision only makes sense on a slope. The roofs nobody walks on are not left in a bare technical finish; they get a decorative one, because they are looked down on from the higher ground around — here the fifth façade is the first one the neighbours see. The roof terraces are anti-slip porcelain tile.
Gallery
Project data
- Typology: Detached new-build multi-family housing, stepped across platforms that follow the slope of the plot
- Use: Residential, collective housing, with parking, storage rooms and a communal pool with gardens
- Location: Montemar, Torremolinos (Málaga, Costa del Sol)
- Design year: 2018
- Status: Concept / preliminary design stage
- Planning classification: CJ-3a Ciudad Jardín, Torremolinos local development plan (PGOU)
- Plot area: 1,026.21 m²
- Built area: 1,346.51 m² (770.43 m² above ground and 576.08 m² below)
- Floorspace used: 808.75 m² countable: a ratio of 0.788 against the 0.83 permitted, with 49.04 % site coverage against a 50 % cap
- Units: 8 dwellings (A to H), two to four bedrooms; 16 parking spaces, one of them a designated accessible bay; 8 storage rooms
- Structure: Reinforced concrete raft and perimeter retaining wall; columns with stepped waffle slabs
- Client: Private developer
- Klic services: Architectural design and construction health and safety study (Estudio de Seguridad y Salud)
- Team: Juan Goñi Uriarte (COA Málaga no. 1206) and Ruth Buján Varela (COA Málaga no. 1333) for Klic Arquitectos, with co-author Rosario Álvarez Granados, architect (COA Almería no. 639)
