All our villa designs are crafted and built by number of experts who meticulously plan, design and build all McLundie projects.

McLundie Architects create designs that are sustainable, memorable, and above all, client-centric. To achieve this, all our designs are crafted and built by number of experts who meticulously plan, design, and build all McLundie projects to meet your and our high expectations.

The secret to get a successful villa design

A successful design is made up of many parts: the client, the site, an architect and their technical team, a technical architect, a project manager, and a contractor. Of all these, the most important member of any project’s team is, of course, you, the client, whose needs, wishes, and desires are the starting point for everything we do. As a client at McLundie, you can expect to work closely with your project’s architect to interpret your wishes -not only for your property itself, but for your lifestyle, too. Your architect will get to know you personally as they listen carefully to your ideas and goals so that they can get a clear picture of your needs and expectations and create a villa design that goes above and beyond your expectations. We know that many of our clients return to us again and again or refer us to friends, family, and colleagues because we put our clients at the heart of everything we do, allowing us to create truly unique, memorable, incredible villas that showcase your wants, needs, values, and lifestyle.

The site for your villa is another crucial aspect to a McLundie design and your architect will take into account a number of factors including orientation, slope, access, wind direction, views, and topography when putting together the best possible project design. The influence of Feng Shui is also of the utmost importance in our designs, so much so that we have an in-house expert to offer on-going input and advice throughout the design process or your home.

With this information -your desires plus site-specific information, your architect will develop an overall project plan, initial cost estimates, and timetables. These first ideas are merely an initial visualization of your architect’s interpretation of your desires so they will be in sketch format, allowing you to openly discuss any changes, alterations, or additional requirements you have for your building. At this stage, ideas are passed back and forth with input from al parties as your design progresses into the next stage of a more considered and detailed design of the villa where together we develop ideas of external appearance materials, and an outline cost plan. At this stage it’s still possible to make changes to fine-tune the design so that your villa not only meets your requirements entirely but is something that both you and your architect are proud of. Once a final design and cost plan is agreed, drawing will be submitted to the local authority for a building license approval so any major changes after this stage will involve additional fees.

Obtaining permission to build from local authorities can take somewhere between 4-6 months, depending on local authority workloads, although if your villa is to be built in Sotogrande (or most other urbanizations on the Costa del Sol), you will likely already have inherent planning permission that includes site occupation and overall build area and height guidelines. After this, or while awaiting this building permission, if needed, McLundie Architects will still be hard at work producing a full set of technical drawings to cover all areas of construction such as lighting, heating, interior finishes, carpentry, construction details, external landscaping, and more. The project manager for your villa will be heavily involved in this stage, assisting you with material choices, monitoring costs, and overseeing design development.

From this set of technical drawings, the technical architect for your project will prepare a full and detailed bill of quantities to itemize materials, parts, and labour for your project in order to request and receive detailed tenders from a number of suitably qualified contractors, chosen by you and your architect, to potentially undertake your villa’s construction. Once tenders are received, typically after 3-4 weeks, they are carefully analysed and compared with each other to see if there are any errors in pricing (both high and low), and narrowed down to two contractors who appear best to carry out the work. Further discussions with these two contractors will help determine which contractor will be hired to undertake the building contract and final negotiations with them will set an agreed price. A detailed bilingual contract will then be signed by both parties which covers all matters, particularly those to do with the cost, program, actions in case of certain eventualities (for example any changes to the design or a failure of the contractor to comply with their obligations). Once this contract is signed, construction of your new villa will begin.

During construction, the architect and technical architect for your project will continue to be highly involved as they visit the site to review construction progress to ensure they have been carried out in accordance with the design specifically as well as good technical practice. In addition to this, the project manager will frequent be on-site to deal with any issues that may affect progress, design, or cost, then discuss these with you so that they can be resolved according to your wishes. A monthly overall progress report will also be prepared by the project manager in order to keep you up-to-date with your villa’s progression and ongoing costs. Designing, planning, and building your villa with McLundie is a multi-step process designed to remove any risk for you, ensuring that the final design of your villa is delivered exactly as planned, at the agreed budget, and to the highest of standards. With the McLundie team of experts undertaking the design and overseeing build of your villa, you are ensured a magnificent new home to move into and enjoy.

If you are looking for a local, professional and experienced architect firm, contact us today. Together we can help transform your vision into reality