The plot came with two constraints. The first is one that catches people out more often than you would think: the cadastral record (Catastro<\/em>) gave 621 m\u00b2, while the topographical survey gave 585 m\u00b2. The survey governs, because that is the area the local plan\u2019s rules work from \u2014 detached-housing zoning, approved in 1998 and later carried into Benalm\u00e1dena\u2019s 2003 general plan. The project was drawn on 585 m\u00b2.<\/p>\n The second constraint was the slope. The ground falls from south-west to north-east. On most plots that is a nuisance you pay for in retaining walls and earthworks. Here it turned into the idea behind the whole scheme.<\/p>\n Above ground there are 128.20 m\u00b2: 85.20 on the ground floor, 43.00 on the first. That covers the house itself: a 26.19 m\u00b2 living and dining room, a 9.89 m\u00b2 kitchen, two secondary bedrooms of 9.38 and 9.31 m\u00b2, and a 22.30 m\u00b2 principal bedroom with its own 10.72 m\u00b2 bathroom and two terraces. Not much else fits.<\/p>\n So everything that is not strictly living space went underground, with the slope supplying a natural ramp for vehicles. The basement runs to 179.71 m\u00b2: garage (49.43 m\u00b2), plant room, laundry, cloakroom, games room (15.44 m\u00b2) and a 35.49 m\u00b2 wine cellar and bar. The local planning rules do not count a basement towards the permitted floor area, which is how the buried floor ended up around 40% larger than the two above it put together.<\/p>\n Digging had its surprise. Once the ground was open, firm strata appeared half a metre lower than expected and the basement dropped from level +98.15 to +97.65. The retaining walls were built in HA-25\/B\/25\/IIa reinforced concrete, tanked externally with an SBS-modified bitumen membrane and a dimpled drainage sheet, backfilled with gravel and a perimeter drain. In a half-buried house, that layer is what decides whether the cellar smells of wine or of damp.<\/p>\n The pool tank and the basement wine cellar share a wall, and three windows were cut through it. The cellar is lit by daylight filtered through the water, and from inside you read the pool in section. It is the kind of idea that only turns up when a basement is treated as a proper floor rather than a store.<\/p>\n The pool is a marble deck-level tank with a linear skimmer: 4.00 x 10.55 m, two depths and 42.22 m\u00b2 of water. It was drawn as a trapezoid and squared off into a rectangle during construction. The tank sits on a 300 mm HA-30\/B\/25\/IV concrete slab, a more demanding exposure class than the rest of the structure. That specification exists for chlorides, which is precisely what treated pool water carries.<\/p>\n The architect\u2019s final certificate (certificado final de obra<\/em>) was signed on 13 July 2021, after some 30 months on site. In between, that certificate records more than a dozen changes against the permitted scheme, none of which added a countable square metre or broke a planning parameter. The ground-floor terraces were levelled to +101.00. The kitchen and a bedroom swapped places. The living and dining rooms were reversed.<\/p>\n The most significant change was structural. The columns supporting the south porch were removed and replaced with inverted downstand beams, leaving the porch clear of supports and lifting the first floor from +104.04 to +104.63. The structure was calculated in-house to CTE, NCSE-02 and EHE-08, and built by Copizcor SL, with 300 mm waffle slabs (25+5) at ground, first and roof level.<\/p>\n The external wall is a cavity construction \u2014 ceramic inner leaf, insulated cavity, half-brick perforated outer leaf \u2014 finished in white, with horizontal timber louvres at the north-west corner. Both roofs are inverted: the accessible one waterproofed with a heat-reflective liquid polyurea, the non-accessible one with twin-layer SBS bitumen and washed gravel. Inside, a free-standing staircase beside the side glazing has Corian treads lit from within, and all the furniture was made as purpose-built joinery. Hot water is supported by solar thermal collectors. The glass balustrades on the drawings were built as masonry parapets instead.<\/p>\n One last figure, for anyone planning time on a Spanish build. The house was finished in July 2021. The occupancy licence (licencia de primera ocupaci\u00f3n<\/em>) was applied for that November. It drew two rounds of council queries, both of which were answered, and was granted on 14 December 2022 \u2014 a year and a half after completion. The build itself closed without a single entry in the site instruction book or the health and safety incident book.<\/p>\nA basement that does not count<\/h2>\n
The pool that lights the cellar<\/h2>\n
The build, and the paperwork after it<\/h2>\n
Gallery<\/h2>\n
![\"Exterior](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/casamaravillas_-39-de-43-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Side](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/casamaravillas_-18-de-43-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Living](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/casamaravillas__-1-de-1-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Main](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/casamaravillas_-8-de-43-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Principal](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/casamaravillas__1-2-de-2-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\nProject data<\/h2>\n
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Other projects by Klic Arquitectos<\/h2>\n