Eco-Tourism Interpretation Centre at Loktak Lake: Moving Settlement Off the Phumdis and Onto Solid Ground

Most tourism architecture asks how to bring more people to a landscape. This proposal asks how to take people off one. Loktak Lake in Manipur is the world's only floating lake, its surface stitched together by drifting masses of vegetation called phumdis. Over time those phumdis have been built on, settled and stressed. The project's central move is to relocate that habitation onto stable ground and then use architecture to explain why the move matters.

Designed by Mohit Raj as a thesis project, the Eco-Tourism Interpretation Centre received an Honorable Mention at UnIATA 2018. The site sits within an ecosystem of unusual significance: the lake holds Keibul Lamjao National Park, the world's only floating national park, and is home to the endangered Sangai deer, known as the dancing deer. It is also a working landscape for indigenous communities whose livelihoods depend on the water. Raj places his intervention on Thanga Island, a small hilly landmass inside the lake, and pairs an Interpretation Centre with an Eco-Tourism Village for relocated tribal families.

A Lake Whose Ground Moves With the Seasons

The aerial view explains the problem better than any diagram. Ring-shaped phumdis enclose pockets of still water, and a lone boatman poling through them gives a sense of scale and fragility at once. The second image, with circular patches of vegetation sitting on a calm surface against hazy hills, shows the lake in a quieter state. These are not fixed islands. During the monsoon the lake expands and the phumdis drift freely, enriching its biodiversity; in summer the water recedes and the masses partially solidify, redrawing the lake's surface.

That instability is what makes settlement on the phumdis so damaging. Raj points out that unregulated construction on them is illegal under the Ramsar framework of 1971, and that it has contributed to water pollution, disrupted habitats and a weakened hydrological cycle. Rather than treating this as background, the project frames the conflict as its brief: if people cannot stay on moving ground without harming it, architecture should give them somewhere better to stand while keeping them connected to the lake.

Bamboo Pavilions That Breathe in a Humid Climate

The rendered elevations show the project's material language clearly: angular slatted walls, slanted struts, diagonal panels and folded or projecting canopy roofs, all in bamboo, set beside stepped seating on a grassy base. Locally sourced bamboo serves as both structure and façade, and the layered screens do practical work, filtering sunlight and cutting heat gain. Elevated forms let air move under and through the buildings, which matters in Loktak's humid climate more than any mechanical system could.

The sloping roofs are not only an image. They collect monsoon rainfall and channel it into artificial waterfalls and ponds before releasing it back into the landscape, a strategy aimed at reducing soil erosion and supporting the lake's hydrology. Construction is modular, which keeps ground disturbance low and means pieces can be repaired or replaced without large-scale demolition. For a building on a small hilly island inside a protected wetland, that reversibility is arguably the most important sustainability claim in the scheme.

Thanga Island as a Village and a Classroom

The presentation board pulls the strategy together: a site plan of the island with scattered huts and winding paths that follow the terrain, a Sangai deer cutout as a reminder of what is being protected, and a roof rendering of the centre. The layout reads as a response to contours, water flows and vegetation rather than an imposed grid, which is consistent with the designer's stated aim of letting the built form follow the land.

At the heart of the plan is the Interpretation Centre itself, organised as a circle with functions arranged radially around a central entrance lobby. The geometry is meant to express the interdependence of ecology, culture and wildlife, and the programme backs it up: interactive classrooms on the science of floating ecosystems, exhibition spaces on Manipuri tribal heritage, and wildlife interpretation. Visitors arrive at the centre, learn how the lake works, and then experience the floating landscape with that knowledge, while the surrounding village offers relocated communities better living conditions and employment tied to tourism.

Why This Project Matters

Eco-tourism proposals often promise conservation and deliver footfall. Raj's thesis is more honest about the tension. It accepts that people already live on the lake, names the harm that causes, and proposes a spatial answer: move habitation to stable ground, keep the cultural link to the water, and let tourism fund the transition. The interpretation centre is not a decorative add-on but the mechanism that makes visitors understand why the phumdis must be left alone.

Questions remain, as they should for any scheme involving community relocation, about consent, governance and how a hilly island absorbs new residents. But as a thesis, the project shows a clear chain of reasoning from ecological problem to site, programme, material and detail. Bamboo, passive cooling, rainwater routed through the landscape and modular assembly all serve one idea: build lightly on the one piece of ground that can hold you, so the ground that floats can keep floating.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Mohit Raj 

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Project credits: Eco-Tourism Interpretation Centre at Loktak Lake : World's only Floating Lake : Architect Mohit by Mohit Raj  UnIATA 2018 (uni.xyz).