{"id":2246,"date":"2026-05-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/coworking-carranza\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T11:27:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T09:27:50","slug":"coworking-carranza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/en\/blog\/coworking-carranza\/","title":{"rendered":"Carranza Coworking \u00b7 El Olivar area, M\u00e1laga"},"content":{"rendered":"

The whole project fits in one sectional sketch: the summer sun, the winter sun and a single note, top light. In June 2013 a private developer asked us for a proposal to fit a coworking into an empty industrial unit in the El Olivar area of M\u00e1laga. The brief covered the first floor only: 834.90 m\u00b2 of open usable floor, no services, an existing industrial and commercial use, and daylight coming in through high windows along the two side walls. It was a competition proposal and it was never built.<\/p>\n

The brief: a coworking in an industrial unit<\/h2>\n

The unit dates from 1997. By 2013 it stood empty, and what services there were stopped at ground floor level. Upstairs there was nothing: a terrazzo floor, bare concrete walls and some furniture in storage. Cadastral records give 904 m\u00b2 built for the whole unit, but the brief covered only the first floor \u2014 834.90 m\u00b2 usable.<\/p>\n

The brief carried a change of use and activity with it (cambio de uso y actividad<\/em>): moving the floor out of industrial and commercial use and into offices. In Spain that question gets settled before anything is drawn. The project folder holds, alongside the freehand sketches from the site visit on 10 June, photographs taken the same evening of the M\u00e1laga city council planning document (PGOU<\/em>) that governs the site.<\/p>\n

The starting point is the one we know from the Solbyte offices in the Guadalhorce Industrial Park<\/a>: a shell built for something else, and an office programme that has to go inside it without pretending the shell isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

What was there: a deep floor that gave up in the middle<\/h2>\n

A reinforced concrete frame, a steel roof structure and a pitched roof in fibre-cement sheeting. Clear height between 3.39 m and 5.31 m depending on where you stand. And one way for daylight to get in: continuous high windows on the two long sides.<\/p>\n

In a unit this deep that gives you two well-lit edges and a middle that fades. For storing pallets it makes no difference. For putting desks there it does. With side windows as the only source, the central band would have run on artificial light all day.<\/p>\n

Reworking the elevations would not have fixed it \u2014 the light would still have arrived from the sides. The problem sat in the section, not in the plan.<\/p>\n

The answer was in the section<\/h2>\n

The bioclimatic sketch for the project draws no elevations at all. It draws the cross-section, the path of the summer sun and the winter sun, and one note: top light. That is the whole project.<\/p>\n

The proposal keeps the unit and changes the roof. The two even pitches give way to two asymmetric pitches with a continuous rooflight at the break, repeated the length of the building. Daylight comes in from above and lands where it never reached before. The fibre-cement sheeting went with it.<\/p>\n

That section also sets out the plan, in three longitudinal strips. On one side, the private offices with the meeting room. In the middle, under the rooflight, the long coworking tables, with the break and canteen areas. On the other side, the service strip: WCs, cleaner\u2019s store, reprographics, library, lockers, a small refreshment bar, the training room and the entrance stair.<\/p>\n

The palette is short and it repeats: timber floor, vertical timber-slat panels, glazed screens that divide without shutting the light out, and conical pendants over the tables. Working inside an existing shell is a good part of what we do \u2014 the Synergym gym network<\/a> and MOSS<\/a> also start by measuring what is already there.<\/p>\n

The programme, counted in pictograms<\/h2>\n

The final board quantifies the scheme in pictograms: 96 co-worker desks in four rows of 24 (61 drawn solid, 35 in outline), 10 office desks, 12 places in the meeting room and 18 in the training room. The board never says what separates the solid pictograms from the outlined ones, so 96 is what was drawn, not a verified capacity.<\/p>\n

And that is where the project stops. No filing with the architects\u2019 board (visado<\/em>), no licence application, no construction: the file is seven boards and a competition panel from 2013. We have drawn other coworkings in M\u00e1laga, among them the Prom\u00e1laga coworking<\/a> and the Polo Digital coworking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That is how competitions tend to go, and we take it as read: they are part of what the studio does \u2014 the Teatinos secondary school competition<\/a> among them \u2014 and not all of them end in a building. What doesn\u2019t stay on the boards is the lesson: in a deep industrial unit you solve daylight by cutting the roof, not by adding windows.<\/p>\n

Gallery<\/h2>\n
\"Render
Open space \u00b7 Carranza coworking, El Olivar, M\u00e1laga \u00b7 render Klic Arquitectos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Render
Interior view \u00b7 Carranza coworking \u00b7 render Klic Arquitectos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Drawings
Drawings \u00b7 general plan, sections and programme \u00b7 Carranza coworking \u00b7 Klic Arquitectos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Bioclimatic
Bioclimatic sketch \u00b7 section with solar orientation \u00b7 Carranza coworking \u00b7 Klic Arquitectos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Project data<\/h2>\n
    \n
  • Typology:<\/strong> Change of use and activity \u2014 coworking in an industrial unit<\/li>\n
  • Use:<\/strong> Offices and coworking (existing use: industrial and commercial)<\/li>\n
  • Location:<\/strong> El Olivar area, M\u00e1laga<\/li>\n
  • Design year:<\/strong> 2013<\/li>\n
  • Status:<\/strong> Competition proposal \u2014 not built<\/li>\n
  • Floor area:<\/strong> 834.90 m\u00b2 usable (first floor of the unit)<\/li>\n
  • Existing structure:<\/strong> Reinforced concrete frame with steel roof structure; unit built in 1997<\/li>\n
  • Clear height:<\/strong> 3.39 \u2013 5.31 m<\/li>\n
  • Roof strategy:<\/strong> Two asymmetric pitches with a continuous rooflight at the break, repeated along the building, for top light<\/li>\n
  • Programme:<\/strong> 96 co-worker desks drawn, 10 office desks, meeting room (12), training room (18), library, reprographics, lockers, refreshment bar, break area, canteen, WCs and cleaner\u2019s store<\/li>\n
  • Materials proposed:<\/strong> Timber floor, timber-slat panels, glazed screens, conical pendant lights<\/li>\n
  • Client:<\/strong> Private developer (individual)<\/li>\n
  • Architects:<\/strong> Ruth Buj\u00e1n Varela \u00b7 Juan A. Go\u00f1i Uriarte<\/li>\n
  • Studio:<\/strong> Klicstudio Arquitectura y Dise\u00f1o (Klic Arquitectos)<\/li>\n
  • Klic services:<\/strong> Change-of-use proposal, layout and interior design<\/li>\n
  • Photography:<\/strong> None \u2014 studio renders and presentation boards only, as the scheme was not built<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n