Light walls, dark joinery and the company’s identity in vinyl graphics on glass, so it shows without closing off the sightlines. A sports services company leased a ground-floor unit in Cerrado de Calderón, in eastern Málaga, to set up its offices: 160.35 m² built and 141.12 m² usable, inside a building dating from 1988. The brief had two fronts: make the office work, and get the activity properly in order with the town hall — which is what decides whether you can open the door.
The brief: offices in Cerrado de Calderón
Ground floor, existing 1988 building, held on a lease. That rules a good deal out before you start: no structural work, no changes to the façade, and every decision has to make sense within the term of the tenancy.
What the company needed was a small, complete headquarters: reception, workstations, a director’s office, a boardroom and an archive. All of it had to fit into 141.12 m² usable.
The layout
The activity drawing organises the unit into eight spaces: entrance, work room, director’s office, boardroom, archive, kitchenette, WC and hallway. The workstations are grouped in the open-plan work room, while the director’s office and the boardroom are enclosed. The archive was declared as storage, at 10 m².
The zones are separated by changes in flooring, furniture made for the unit and a restrained use of the corporate colour. Vinyl graphics on the glass carry the identity without closing off the sightlines. Walls in light tones, joinery in dark — chosen for wear and maintenance rather than for effect. A small office reads cleaner the less it tries to say.
Opening: the procedure that decides whether you can open
An office does not open because it is finished. It opens because the town hall has a record of it. We surveyed the unit on 25 April 2017 and checked the Catastro (Spain’s property cadastre) two days later. From that came the two drawings in the file: sheet 01, a 1:75 floor plan with furniture, an area schedule and the fire protection installations — CO2 and 21A-113B extinguishers, emergency lighting and exit signs — and sheet 02, a location plan on the zoning and land-use map of Málaga’s PGOU (general urban development plan) at 1:5000.
The route was a Declaración Responsable de Actividades (self-certified declaration of activity) filed with the town hall’s Opening Licences Service, with the reason given as primera instalación (first installation). The installations safety certificate puts in writing the two facts that make that route possible: premises under 300 m², and an activity neither classified under Law 13/1999 nor included in Appendix 5 of the municipal fire protection ordinance. On that basis it certifies compliance with the CTE (Spanish Technical Building Code), the fire ordinance itself, Decree 293/2009 on accessibility and the REBT (Spanish low-voltage electrical regulations).
Outcome
The file was entered in the General Register of Málaga Town Hall on 5 May 2017, stamped for opening, and became municipal file 883/17. From that date the headquarters was in order and the company could operate from it. It is the part of the job nobody photographs, and the part that holds up everything else.
Gallery
Project data
- Typology: Office renovation and interior design (commercial/office use)
- Use: Commercial (office). Declared activity: private administrative office
- Location: Cerrado de Calderón, Málaga
- Design year: 2017
- Status: Opening file registered and stamped at Málaga Town Hall on 5 May 2017 (municipal file 883/17, filed as a “first installation”)
- Built area: 160.35 m² gross / 141.12 m² usable
- Units: 1 ground-floor office unit in a 1988 building
- Client: Private sports services company (unit held on a lease)
- Programme: Entrance, work room, director’s office, boardroom, archive (10 m²), kitchenette, WC and hallway, with the corporate graphic identity integrated into the space
- Klic services: Office design and interior design. Measured survey of the unit, activity drawings (1:75 floor plan and 1:5000 PGOU location plan), installations safety certificate and filing of the self-certified declaration for opening
- Studio: Klic Arquitectos (Málaga)
- Team: Juan A. Goñi Uriarte, architect, member no. 1206 of the College of Architects of Málaga (COA Málaga)
