Live map experiment
Ulsoor Lake
A slab of Bengaluru, cut out around Ulsoor Lake and set on the table. Real streets, real shoreline, real hills, and the weather that is over it right now.
Building Ulsoor from the map…
Ulsoor Lake · Bengaluru
26°
Partly cloudy
Map © OpenStreetMap contributors · Elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles
Drag to turn the map, scroll to zoom, tap the water or a pin.
Why this one
Maps tell you where things are, but not what a place feels like. I wanted to hold a piece of Bengaluru in my hands: Ulsoor Lake and the streets around it, cut out like a slab of earth and set on the table. It's built from real map data, and the weather over it is the weather over Ulsoor right now.
The small details
Everything on the slab is real.
01 / The real shape of the lake
The shoreline, all seven islands, about 3,300 buildings and every street come from OpenStreetMap. The hills come from real elevation data, raised five times so you can see the lake sitting in its basin.
02 / Water that behaves like water
The lake is simulated, the same way as the pool in Bengaluru in a Jar. Raindrops and taps make rings that spread, cross and bounce off the real banks and islands.
03 / The real sun
The light comes from where the sun actually is over Ulsoor, worked out from the time, and nudged toward golden hour so the hills and buildings always cast long shadows. After dark, windows light up across the city and the lamps come on around the lake.
04 / Garden City
Thousands of trees fill the parks, the islands and the lake's edge and line the avenues, with the odd jacaranda, tabebuia or gulmohar in flower. They sway with the live wind.