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Inside India's newest man-made lake | By the Waters, Ahmedabad
Tumbleweeds roll across the road, stark against the heat haze on the horizon, as we leave Ahmedabad city limits. In the suburbs, the landscape is a dry, dusty brown, which makes our destination all the more difficult to visualise: a massive 72,600 square yard man-made lake nestled in the heart of By the Waters, an upcoming ultra-exclusive 100-acre residential estate by Suryam Developers. Yes, a lake. In the middle of parched scrubland. The surprise lessens when we learn Witteveen+Bos has engineered the hydrology for this project. The Dutch know a thing or two about working with water in unlikely places — after all, they literally wrangled their country from the sea. Just 35 km from Ahmedabad, the lake, or Blue Heart as it is called, is being planned as the idyllic backdrop for 99 bespoke waterfront villas (made in collaboration with SCDA Architects from Singapore) at Suryam’s new residential estate. “The inspiration was a refusal to accept that luxury in India must mean verticality and density,” says G.M. Patel, founder and chairman of Suryam Group. “What we kept returning to was a simpler question: what does stillness feel like? And water is the most ancient answer to that question.” Early...
