What makes Aqua Vita beautiful to come home to

Aqua Vita Residencies is one tower, fourteen floors and ninety-eight homes, standing where Hulhumalé meets the Indian Ocean. Its whole design turns on a single idea: that the sea should be in every room. For a tenant, that idea is the reason to look.

A building that faces one way

The developer describes Aqua Vita as sitting "at the very edge of the Indian Ocean", and the plans follow from that. The two- and three-bedroom apartments were laid out so that every room, bedrooms included, opens onto a view of the water. Each home has a private balcony. Living and dining share one open-plan space, arranged so the eye runs straight through the room and out to the horizon.

It is a simple arrangement with a clear intent: wake up to the water, eat looking at it, sit out on the balcony in the evening with the ocean in front of you.

The catalogue also notes that Aqua Vita is the tallest complex in its phase of the island. That is the developer's claim rather than the desk's measurement. What the desk can say is that the building is a single block, so there is no second tower of its own standing between the flats and the view.

Inside the flats

The interiors take their cue from the Maldives itself. The developer's plan was to commission artwork for the apartments from local artists and craftsmen, so that island culture sits against a contemporary backdrop rather than being hidden by it. Built-in cupboards keep the bedrooms clear. The attached bathrooms use imported sanitaryware, taps and showers chosen, the brief says, for how little water they use as much as for how they look.

The kitchen is treated as a centrepiece. The catalogue calls it a pantry: racking and fixtures imported from Germany, Corian counter tops, one smooth surface from end to end.

The homes Binga has handled bear this out. A fully furnished three-bedroom apartment of 1,427 sq ft, which sold through Binga this year, was described in its listing as bright and open-plan, with warm wooden parquet, cool tiling, a jacuzzi and double-glazed windows that shut out the noise. A furnished 2+1 on a high floor, 1,100 sq ft, was listed through Binga in August and has since been let.

The shared spaces

The idea behind the whole project, in the developer's words, was apartments with "the look and feel of a luxury hotel". The part of that idea a tenant can actually use is the club house next to the tower. It has a 22-metre swimming pool, long enough for real lengths rather than a quick dip, and a gym. A large hall is built into the same club house, for business meetings or private functions.

For a household, that means the morning swim and the evening workout happen downstairs, and a birthday or a family gathering has a room that is not the living room.

What stays with you

The real test of a building on the water is how it feels at the end of an ordinary day. The lift opens, the door closes behind you, and the first thing you see is the sea. Aqua Vita was designed for that moment, and the flats let through Binga suggest the design delivers it: quiet rooms, natural light, and the ocean filling the windows.

The concierge team can tell you which floors and which layouts are currently available to rent, and what the view is like from each one.