Mumbai is a city built on reclaimed land, and the sea has never forgotten it.

Of Land or Water is a long-term urban resilience proposal for the R-Ward in Borivali, one of Mumbai's most flood-vulnerable districts, developed in response to the compounding pressures of tidal action, groundwater dynamics, flash flooding, and rising sea levels. The project argues that the question facing architects and planners is how to accommodate water and how to design a city that knows when to yield to the forces of nature.

The proposal works across three timeframes and four spatial scales. In the near term, open space systems are indexed and redesigned to absorb, retain, and create pathways for water without altering existing infrastructure. In the mid term, a new permeable road network prioritises water, people, and material flow equally, while recreational grounds are introduced along the watershed. In the long term, built form strategies respond to a vulnerability index across the site - relocating the most at-risk settlements to safer zones, densifying along watershed edges, and introducing new resilient typologies for communities displaced by rising water.

The watershed, rather than the administrative boundary, becomes the organising logic of the entire proposal. The city is redrawn around water rather than against it.

Of land or water was designed collaboratively by students of A15 at SEA and was featured in Sunday Mid-Day, "That Sinking Feeling," 1 December 2019.