Budget Breakdown: This Cantilevered Home Near Madrid Was Built With Tiny Prefab Modules for €324,000

Ignacio de la Vega and Pilar Cano-Lasso were not planning on designing the home that they did. "The idea before buying the land was for a more traditional, very introverted, South-of-Spain-style house with massive walls around a patio," recalls Ignacio. "But then we found this site and it made no sense to do that."

The sloping land the architect couple found is nestled on the outskirts of Madrid, filled with pine and oak trees. Immediately, they knew it was special, an environment they wanted to respect and enhance, they say, that dictated a completely different kind of home than the one they initially envisioned: something small, site sensitive, and simple. These principles jived more with their core design ethos, anyway. The couple, founders of Madrid firm, Delavegacanolasso, pride themselves on compact, modular homes that easily adapt to a site.

Pilar and Ignacio describe the area as quiet and not particularly popular, but that wasn’t a problem for them. "We can work from home, so we didn’t mind being a bit far away [from the city]," explains Ignacio. "And we didn’t want to see any buildings from the house. We wanted to just [be in] nature."