Historically, water was viewed by architecture as a mere backdrop, an obstacle to be drained, or a public service to be provided. However, in contemporary India, the relationship with water has taken on a dimension of great impact. Although water remains a shared ecological resource, the surrounding land and infrastructure are increasingly treated and financed as economic assets. This results in the expansion of coastlines to accommodate traffic and the transformation of lake shores into profitable real estate areas. This decision-making involves various institutions with distinct terminologies, complicating the definition of who controls the use of water and its surroundings, as well as who bears the consequences.
Mumbai was traditionally built through water diversion, and the Coastal Road follows this practice on an infrastructural scale. According to the Municipal Corporation (BMC), the 10.6-kilometer southern segment generated approximately 111 hectares of reclaimed land, designated for roads, bridges, roundabouts, and public spaces. The argument presented by the BMC focuses on improving mobility and public benefit, aiming to reduce travel time in the city and provide about 1.24 square meters per inhabitant in one of the planet's most dense metropolises.
In 2019, the Bombay High Court overturned coastal licenses due to the absence of appropriate scientific studies. Despite this, the court upheld the regulatory change authorizing reclamation for road construction, and the Supreme Court stayed the injunction, allowing the works to proceed. Issues regarding damage to coastal ecosystems caused by reclamation and the behavior of the retaining wall remain under debate without a definitive conclusion.
For local architect Alan Abraham, who later requested design modifications for the reclaimed section from the court, the core of the problem lies in priorities. He argued that 'the city needs roads, not the coast,' suggesting relocating the road inland so that public space could connect directly to the water. The BMC, conversely, responded that the project was based on expert studies and that alterations were no longer possible with most of the work completed.
The lakes of Bengaluru were initially planned as an interconnected system of artificial canals for rainwater drainage, known as rajakaluves. The preservation of these lakes depends less on regulations than on the demarcation of their boundaries. Municipal authorities established a uniform 30-meter buffer zone around the lakes, restricting construction in this area. However, in 2025, the state proposed an amendment that would replace these strips with buffer zones based on the size of the water body, offering no protection for smaller ones, and three meters for areas up to one acre.
Legal analyses indicate that the previous norms were deemed unscientific, and the bill would allow certain public utility structures, such as pumping stations and roads, within these buffer zones. This bill returned at the end of 2025 without consultation with the state expert committee or the public. Lakes that previously absorbed monsoon runoff and recharged the groundwater now direct this water into narrowed canals. Construction in these buffer strips can reduce space for water dispersion and infiltration during heavy rains, increasing surface runoff and pressuring already overloaded drainage networks.
A study on flood-affected neighborhoods confirms the significant presence of informal occupation or improper use of the canals connecting the lake network. In one locality, the water table dropped from about 100 feet to 600 feet in six years after a lake disappeared. In Bengaluru, the buffer zone ceased to be a natural element and became a legal figure, and its alteration redefines what can be considered buildable land.
Data centers represent a problem of another magnitude, given that their water requirement is not visible in form or implementation of the building. WRI India reported that more than half of the country's data centers are located in water-stressed regions, concentrated mainly in five states: Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, the proposed guidelines for 2026 in Uttar Pradesh foresee a continuous water supply for data centers, even if India currently lacks established requirements for disclosing water consumption data.
Decreased local water use can increase electricity demand, and since power plants also consume water, scarcity can be transferred to the energy grid instead of being resolved. In India, recycled urban wastewater is a supply resource needed by other users in water-scarce cities. In water-stressed Indian regions, the choice and design of a data center can impact water availability for residences, agriculture, and other local uses. A highly efficient facility in an overcrowded watershed still draws from a shared supply, making site selection essentially a decision about who gets access to water.
In summary, these three examples demonstrate water as a resource: displaced, limited, and destined for infrastructure. In all of them, as in most projects, the decision occurs before architectural planning. Architectural professionals often inherit existing conditions rather than shaping them.
However, architectural professionals can intervene individually in the early stages of the process. They have the capacity to question needs programs that assume guaranteed land, request water balances and hydrological assessments before accepting or proposing a location, and suggest alternatives to fixed layouts, as done by the Abraham collective. The Mumbai architectural community has adopted this approach on more than one occasion. The Mumbai Architects Collective, comprising about 120 firms, presented alternative design proposals for the Coastal Road. In Chennai, in 2019, design teams from the Water as Leverage program developed closed-loop water systems for neighborhoods.
Sustainability cannot be assessed solely by the performance of an isolated building, as this performance depends on the territory it occupies and the shared resources it utilizes. If water demand had been declared from the outset as a condition of the land, some of the buildings today considered inevitable might never have been proposed in their current locations. Whether the profession and the institutions that hire it are willing to start with this premise remains an open question.
