CII Godrej Green Business Centre Case Study: Plan, Climate and LEED Platinum (Karan Grover)

The CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre in Hyderabad is a demonstration building for the Confederation of Indian Industry, designed by Karan Grover of Karan Grover & Associates, Vadodara. It was rated LEED Platinum in November 2003, before it opened, and was inaugurated on 14 July 2004. Its rooms close around an inward-looking court on a rocky site, with wind towers that pre-cool fresh air, a roof shared between grass and solar panels, and water kept and treated on site. Below: the brief, site, plan, section, materials, climate strategy, the energy figures as published, and what designers can take from it.

CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre: architect and brief

The idea came from USAID. A. Venkata Narayana's report in SPAN (January/February 2004) says Srinivasan Padmanabhan, an energy adviser to USAID in New Delhi, proposed it in 2000, and that the centre was conceived around President Clinton's visit to India in March 2000. CII sent a group of Indian experts and an architect on a "design tour" of green buildings in the United States. Construction only began in August 2002, after delays in getting about two hectares of land from the Andhra Pradesh government.

The same report says Jamshyd N. Godrej, managing director of Godrej & Boyce, gave Rs 50 million towards a total construction cost of Rs 80 million, and that Karan Grover, "an internationally acclaimed and LEED-accredited architect", offered his services. Business Today (August 2004) gives the cost as about Rs 10 crore. Grover holds a B.Arch and an M.Arch from the Architectural Association, London, according to his firm's site.

The programme, as BuildingGreen listed it in December 2003:

• Technology centre, about 325 sq m, for showing new green products.
• Seminar hall, about 325 sq m, seating 300.
• Information centre, about 95 sq m.
• Meeting rooms and offices for 29 people.

The building itself was the exhibit. Business Today called it a "demonstration building", and the target was the top LEED level. SPAN quotes project coordinator Air Commodore (Retd) S. C. Kumar: the long-term aim was a self-sustaining unit, so the team built in "many features" to earn LEED points.

Site and context: rocks, contours and climate

The site lies in Kothaguda, near HITEC City. The architects' project page says the rocks already on the site decided how the spaces were arranged, and the contours set the position and level of each plinth. Rediff (July 2004) reported that the site was not disturbed during construction, as LEED required.

CSE's 2014 analysis places the building in the composite climate zone, the band BEE uses for its benchmark. The design answers heat with shade, evaporative cooling and a court. For what this ground and heat mean for ordinary houses, see our guide to building materials in Hyderabad.

Concept and design ideas: an introverted court

The architects describe the centre as an "introverted court" that serves interaction and exhibitions, while keeping physical and visual links to the landscape beyond. Three older devices recur in every account:

• The court. Jeremy Williams, in The Earthbound Report (2019), describes a colonnaded courtyard, with the building shaped and oriented to catch prevailing winds.
• Wind towers. In a 2013 interview with Vandana Shukla in The Tribune, Grover says the team "experimented with wind towers used in Sindh". He describes a canopy like a chhajja catching the wind, and the air picking up moisture from water dripping from a pitcher as it passes down a duct.
• Jaali. Grover says the building "used a lot of jaali" for cooling. See our jaali design guide for how screens are sized for light and air.

None of these is decoration added to a sealed box. Each does a job that a fan or chiller would otherwise do.

CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre plan and site plan

We have not found a published, dimensioned plan we could check, so the diagram below shows the zoning principle only, from the descriptions. The rooms of the brief sit around the court. Two wind towers appear in most accounts; Grover's own account mentions four. Rocks stay where they were, and the plinths step with the ground. Water from the roofs and the building runs to planted treatment beds and ponds.

Two points matter for a student drawing the plan:

1. Inward-facing rooms. The working rooms face the court, which brings daylight and air into them without exposing long walls to the sun outside.
2. North light. Business Today describes a "north orientation" with the glazing maximised on that side, which gives daylight with less direct sun.

For the real drawings and photographs, see the architects' project page and the centre's own website. Our case study field checklist covers what to measure on a visit.

Section and structure: how air, light and water move

The sources describe the section through its services more than its structure. The listed structural engineers are Comten Engineers, but none of the sources we read describes the frame or the roof slab, so we do not label them.

The wind towers are the key part of the section. Rediff reported that water sprayed inside two "air-conditioning towers" cools the incoming air by about 7 to 8 degrees, and that this pre-cooled air goes to the air-conditioning system. Grover told The Tribune the air dropped from about 40 degrees to 27 to 29 degrees before it reached the air-handling units. Business Today put the saving at 7 to 10 per cent of the air-conditioning load. SPAN says the conditioned rooms are held at 26 degrees C through the year.

This is not a passive building. It is an air-conditioned building whose fresh air is cooled cheaply first. Students sometimes describe the wind towers as replacing air conditioning; none of the sources says that.

Materials and construction

Accounts of the materials agree on recycled content and fly ash, but they disagree on the details:

• Recycled content. SPAN (2004) says more than 25 per cent of the materials were recycled, naming wood, steel and glass, which Grover and Kumar searched the markets for. Rediff, Business Today and Grover himself in 2013 give about 80 per cent. Business Today's list includes aluminium, fly ash, cement and blocks, ceramic tiles, wood, false ceilings and door frames. The two figures may count different things; no source explains the gap.
• Cement and walls. SPAN says the cement contains a high share of fly ash. The Earthbound Report says fly ash bricks make up two-thirds of the walls. A 2023 Bizz Buzz report says the walls are autoclaved aerated concrete blocks. We could not settle which is right.
• Boards. The Earthbound Report says bagasse, the fibre left after sugarcane is crushed, was pressed into boards in place of plywood.

For how fly ash and AAC compare in ordinary walls, see our red brick, AAC and fly ash comparison.

Light, climate and services

Roof garden and solar panels

The roof does two jobs. The Greenroofs.com project listing describes about 1,022 sq m of roof, with 55 to 60 per cent covered by grass sod on about 2 inches of sandy soil over three waterproofing layers, at a 6 per cent slope, and solar panels on the rest. Rediff gave 60 per cent garden. In 2004 the panels were 24 kW, making 100 to 120 units a day and meeting about 20 per cent of the building's energy cost (Rediff). CII's page on the net zero rating now gives 130 kWp of solar. Our roofing by climate guide covers green roofs on ordinary houses.

Water

Greenroofs.com describes the water cycle: all wastewater and runoff passes through root-zone treatment, a planted filter bed, and is held in one of three ponds for reuse. The aim is zero discharge. Municipal drinking water use is 35 per cent lower, partly through low-flush toilets and waterless urinals. Business Today reported a rainwater pond of 8 lakh litres. In SPAN, Kumar says municipal water would be used only for drinking, a few kilolitres at a time.

Energy: measured over claimed

Many figures for this building are design claims. Rediff reported 55 per cent less energy than a conventional building. Business Today gave an 88 per cent lighting saving. Grover told The Tribune the building "could save 62 per cent energy". None says what baseline was used or when it was measured.

The reported operating figures are more useful:

• BEE star label. A list of buildings found eligible for the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's office star label, dated January 2011 and hosted by CSE, gives the centre an energy performance index of 84 kWh per sq m per year and five stars.
• IGBC data. CSE's 2014 paper Making sense of green building rating lists 160,000 kWh a year over 19,906 sq ft, an index of 87, against BEE's one-star cut-off of 190 for a day-use office in this climate. CSE notes that this data was self-disclosed and neither verified nor audited.
• Net zero. CII's undated page puts annual use at 200 to 204 MWh, against 220 MWh a year that the 130 kWp of panels "would generate". That is an expected yield, not a metered one.

Use has grown from 160 MWh to about 200 MWh a year. Bizz Buzz reported in 2023 that the centre began with 17 to 20 people and now has about 100; the original brief was for 29. We did not find a source that links the two figures.

Reception: ratings, claims and critics

The reception in 2003 and 2004 was about the rating. SPAN reported that it was the only building outside the United States, and the third in the world, to reach LEED Platinum. BuildingGreen called it the first project rated Platinum under LEED version 2. Business Today and Greenroofs.com give 56 of 69 points. At the opening, Jamshyd Godrej called it "the greenest building in the world" (Rediff), a claim based on the LEED score, not on measured use.

The wider critique came later. In "Certified, not certain" (Down To Earth, 15 October 2014), Avikal Somvanshi reported CSE's finding that 47 per cent of the LEED-India office and IT buildings it assessed failed BEE's star benchmark. The article does not name this building, and CSE's own table shows the centre well inside the cut-off. The point stands for students: a rating awarded at design stage is not a performance result.

Two later events extended the record. CII's page announces the IGBC Net Zero Energy Platinum rating with 85 points; The Machine Maker (September 2026) dates it to 2019. Bizz Buzz quotes M Anand of IGBC calling it "the first building built on energy modeling principles". We found no published account of leaks, defects or alterations to the building.

What designers in India can take from it today

Our reading, not the architects' claims:

1. Let the site write the plan. Keeping the rocks and stepping the plinths with the contours cost nothing and gave the plan its shape. On a rocky Deccan plot, survey the outcrops before you draw.
2. Pre-cool rather than promise passive. The towers do a modest, specific job: they cool fresh air before the air-handling units. A wind tower sized to pre-cool is easier to justify than one meant to replace air conditioning.
3. Split the roof deliberately. Grass where it insulates, panels where they earn. Decide the share early, because waterproofing, slope and drainage depend on it.
4. Publish the meter readings. This building is credible because its energy index has been reported more than once. Ask clients to share a year of bills after handover. Our guide to IGBC, GRIHA, LEED and ECSBC explains which ratings ask for this.

Visiting the Green Business Centre

The building is CII's working office, not a museum. The centre's official website links a green building tour from its home page and lists contact details at Survey No. 64, Kothaguda Post, Hyderabad 500084. It publishes no visiting hours or fees that we could find, so write to the centre through the site before you go.

FAQ

Who is the architect of the CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre?

Karan Grover of Karan Grover & Associates, Vadodara. Arati Chari & Associates were the landscape architects, Comten Engineers the structural engineers and the Tata Energy Research Institute the energy consultants, according to Greenroofs.com.

Where is the CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre located?

At Survey No. 64, Kothaguda Post, near HITEC City in Hyderabad, Telangana, PIN 500084.

When was it built, and when did it get LEED Platinum?

Construction began in August 2002 and finished in November 2003, the same month the LEED Platinum rating came through. President A P J Abdul Kalam inaugurated it on 14 July 2004. A 2023 Bizz Buzz report gives 14 June 2004; CII's own site says 14 July.

Why is it called a green building?

It keeps its site's rocks, pre-cools fresh air in wind towers, covers more than half its roof in grass and the rest in solar panels, treats and reuses its water, and uses fly ash and recycled materials. Its reported energy index of 84 to 87 kWh per sq m per year earned a BEE five-star label.

Is there a CII Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre case study PDF or floor plan?

India Environment Portal lists a 2012 CII architectural case study, but we could not find a downloadable copy. The architects' project page and CII's site are the official references; our diagrams above show the zoning and section principles, not the measured plan.

Designing for heat and water on your own site? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

• SPAN (US Embassy, New Delhi), A. Venkata Narayana: "Green Makes Business Sense", January/February 2004, pp. 57 to 59, via the US government web archive (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• BuildingGreen, Environmental Building News: Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre case study, 1 December 2003 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Karan Grover & Associates: CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre Hyderabad: LEED Platinum and About us (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre: official website and About us (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• CII Energy Efficiency: CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre becomes a Net Zero Energy Platinum rated building (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Business Today, E. Kumar Sharma: "Cleanup Crew: The Art Of The Green", August 2004 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Rediff, Syed Amin Jafri: "Kalam to open world's 'greenest' building", 13 July 2004 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Tribune, Vandana Shukla: "Go vernacular with architecture", interview with Karan Grover, 2013 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Greenroofs.com: CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre project listing (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Earthbound Report, Jeremy Williams: "Building of the week: CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre", 4 October 2019 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Bureau of Energy Efficiency: Buildings found eligible for issue of star label under the Bureau's office star labelling scheme, list dated January 2011, hosted by CSE (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Centre for Science and Environment: Making sense of green building rating, 2014 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Down To Earth, Avikal Somvanshi: "Certified, not certain", 15 October 2014 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Bizz Buzz, Divya Rao: "1st greenest building outside US is in Hyd", 28 July 2023 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• India Environment Portal: Architectural case study: CII Sohraji Godrej Green Business Centre, Hyderabad, listing dated 31 July 2012 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Machine Maker: IGBC marks 25 years of green building growth, September 2026 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)