Stand on Golf Drive in Sector 42 and you can read twenty years of Gurgaon in the buildings around you. Three DLF projects mark the turns in that story. The Aralias, handed over in 2007-08, set the template for the golf-course apartment. The Camellias, completed about a decade later, built a whole estate around a club. The Arbour, launched in 2023 on Golf Course Extension Road, takes the idea to a single plan of more than a thousand homes. We often walk clients through all three in the same week, and the differences say a good deal about what buyers have asked for over time.
Chapter one: the golf-course enclave
In the mid-2000s Gurgaon was still filling in. Golf Course Road was the address, and DLF5 was the part of it built around DLF Golf & Country Club. The Aralias was DLF's first "Sale by Invitation" project, designed by Hafeez Contractor with landscape by Belt Collins International. By the architect's count it holds about 250 apartments and penthouses, and they were handed over with unfinished interiors so that owners could fit them out themselves.
That bare-shell handover tells you about the period. Buyers wanted a large floor plate and a view of the course, and they expected to bring their own architects for everything inside. The building's job was to be quiet, well placed and generous in size. The Magnolias next door, completed around 2012-13 on a 22.7-acre site within the club grounds, followed the same thinking, again delivered semi-finished.
Chapter two: the club becomes the estate
The Camellias, also on Golf Drive, shows what changed in ten years. It has 429 apartments in nine towers on about 17.8 acres, with the tallest blocks rising to 38 floors. DLF reported it as completed inventory in mid-2019, and The Camellias Club opened in October 2021. The design team was wider: Hafeez Contractor again as principal architect, SWA Group on landscape, and Rockwell Group of New York on the clubhouse.
The club is the point. At 160,000 sq ft it sits in a 1.3-acre water garden and includes a 50 m pool, a 30,000 sq ft spa and ten food and beverage outlets. DLF also describes The Camellias as India's first residential development with LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council. The homes are still large, from about 7,400 sq ft for the Classic residence to duplex penthouses of 13,000 to 16,000 sq ft (saleable areas, as published by DLF in 2015). What the buyer now gets alongside the apartment is a daily life that can be run almost entirely on site.
In our experience, Camellias owners talk about the club and its services as much as about their apartment. That is a real shift from the Aralias generation, where the golf course across the road did that work.
Chapter three: one plan, many homes
The Arbour in Sector 63 marks DLF's move onto Golf Course Extension Road. Launched in 2023, it has 1,137 four-bedroom homes in five towers on about 25 acres, with completion due by March 2030. The 4 BHK has 2,255 sq ft of carpet area. DLF reported in March 2023 that the project had sold out before its formal launch.
The scale tells you who it is for. These are family homes built to one plan in towers of 38 to 39 storeys, and buyers choose from essentially one configuration. The same campus hosts The Aureva, a separately registered senior-living tower. The appeal is a DLF home on a newer road, finished by the developer rather than by the owner's own contractors.
What the three chapters have in common
Read together, the three projects show Gurgaon moving from individual homes toward managed communities. The number of homes rises from about 250 to 429 to 1,137, and the handover moves from a bare shell to a finished flat. None of this makes one chapter better than another. Each suits a different buyer.
A family that wants space above all, and plans to do its own interiors, still looks first at Golf Drive. A family that wants its week organised around a club leans toward The Camellias. A family that wants a newer four-bedroom home and is comfortable in a large community will find The Arbour fits. All three now change hands only on resale, so what is available depends on who is selling at the time. We would not advise anyone to choose on the name alone.
Reading the skyline yourself
If you visit, start on Golf Drive in the morning and drive down to Sector 63 in the afternoon. Look at the age of the trees, the width of the roads and how far the towers sit from the boundary wall. Those details tell you more about daily life than any brochure. Our office is at 621, Emerald Plaza, Sector 65, and we are glad to walk the route with you and bring the papers for whichever project you are weighing.
