Karan Grover is accustomed to being a man on the move…and this is tellingly evident when we try to get the globetrotting Vadodara-based architect to stay still for a photograph. Cheerful and animated when we have had the pleasure to interact with him at architecture or design award ceremonies, heritage awareness programmes, art exhibition openings or wine tasting events where he is invariably the life of the party, he fidgets uncomfortably and acquires a deadpan expression when the lens is trained on him – until wife, Nisha prods him into life again. Then Grover laughs his characteristic hearty laugh. Here is a man who believes in doing everything with intense passion…or not at all.

When he invites you over for potluck, he does not take it as casually as it sounds. Despite digging his fingers into many pies, the charismatic crusader of varied causes ensures that the meal smells, looks and tastes the way he has imagined it. “The biryani lunch seems simple, but elaborate planning has gone into it,” divulges Grover, who selected a tasteful platter with a stunning dhakkan for the biryani, an exquisite plate from the Metropolitan Museum in New York for the raita and a beautiful Bali spoon to serve it. His attention to detail extends to the floral napkins that reflect the mood of the garden beyond the glass doors. “It’s impossible to eat outside due to the scorching heat, so I tried to bring the essence of the madhumalti and pergola inside,” he explains.

Grover obviously detests false modesty, for he takes immense pride in drawing attention to his design skills – evident in the handpicked furniture, discerning art and assorted accessories that pepper his beautifully-appointed home. His frenzied work schedule does not stop him from arranging the flowers either, despite the fact that his visiting artist aunt from Australia would have undoubtedly enjoyed the task. From a Japanese bowl with tiny blossoms floating serenely on the surface to a wildly exuberant arrangement of banana leaves camouflaging a smaller vase set within a monstrously large one…he tries it all. “This has no logic,” he grins with unconcealed delight, “but that’s the way I wanted it.”

It is that fundamental quality of getting what he wants, that has made Grover an achiever par excellence. Recently, he made news worldwide when the CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre designed and built by him in Hyderabad won the Platinum rating from the US Green Building Council (USGBC) – the first building outside the USA to have done so! The USGBC criteria are classified according to: sustainability of the site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environment quality, innovation and design process…and out of 69 points, the Grover design won 56.

Essentially, he has employed lessons learnt from Indian tradition. “This is a courtyard building and we have made use of jaalis...because when hot air comes in through a small opening and expands, it cools,” explains Grover. “We’ve used a wind tower to reduce the ambient air by 10 C and then give it to the air handling unit (AHU), so the AHU has less to cool. About 88 per cent of the building is naturally lit and does not need artificial light during the day. We recycle 100 per cent of the water, so our intake from the corporation is reduced by 35 per cent. We used 80 per cent of recycled material in the construction and reduced our load of air conditioning by 20 per cent, so we use half the energy to run the building.” The note of pride in his voice is unmistakable as he points out that “these are all major achievements which had not been accomplished before”.

Causes like environment and heritage conservation come naturally to Grover, who has visited museums and historic sites worldwide with his parents as a child. It is not surprising that his obsession with construction goes hand in hand with his passion for preservation. What is surprising is that this innate passion was cultivated thanks to the fact that he was a sportsman! When he came to Vadodara as an architecture student in 1969, he had earned laurels for swimming at Elphinstone College, Mumbai – so he arranged to meet the person in charge of the pool where he could practise his sport. That person was archaeologist, Arun Mehta, who had spent years excavating Champaner. A bond was forged…and every weekend, the young Grover was taken to the site and schooled in its significance.

Inevitably, the day came for Mehta to pass on the baton. “He said to me: Look, I’ve given 30 years of my life to Champaner, now I want to give it to you,” discloses Grover. “I remember laughing and saying: I’m 22 years old, how can you give me this city? It’s a buried city, it’s not yours to give…but he insisted that he needed my commitment. Finally, I agreed and promised to make it a World Heritage site. He died the next day…and at his funeral, his wife told me that he had packed a trunk, full of his excavation drawings of Champaner, the previous night. I was convinced I had to do this for him.”

Champaner became Grover’s cause celebre…and for 30 years he led two parallel lives – juggling his work as an architect with his mission to put Champaner on the world map. “I started my firm in 1975…and until 2004, I would practise architecture in the daytime, then from the evenings till the next morning I would work on Champaner – deciding on strategies to create awareness. We started the Heritage Trust in 1984 and promoted the Heritage Club for children. I did not realise then that architecture and this heritage involvement were connected, so I never talked to architects about Champaner and I never spoke to archaeologists and other activists about my architecture.”

All that changed in 2004, when Champaner was nominated as a World Heritage Site and Karan Grover & Associates (KGA) won the platinum rating from the USGBC. That was a light bulb moment for Grover, who realised that each of his two grand passions was stoking the other. Since then, he has been juxtaposing them in his presentations. “I realised after 10 years of practice that nothing I was doing was of any value,” he confesses bluntly. “The problem was that my architecture, upbringing, college, teachers, textbooks were all Western-oriented. We were trying to replicate buildings that had nothing to do with our climate, culture and customs. The architecture of place, which is rooted to our context, was influenced by my interaction with Champaner.”

Since it is the property of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Heritage Trust is not permitted to touch Champaner – but they inculcate awareness, act as watchdogs and expose different sites. “We have just done our first excavation and have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the ASI. The Heritage Trust, of which I am now president, is the only NGO in the country to have signed an MOU with the ASI,” exults Grover. “We are making bids to get money worldwide to do work on Champaner. But as of now, we just continue to document it. With 120 buildings above the ground and 2,000 to 3,000 buildings below, it’s at least another 30 years work!”

Work is something that he ‘adores’, and Grover is lucky to be in a profession that he enjoys. This natural-born leader knew with amazing clarity at the tender age of 12 what he wanted to be. Looking back, he is unsure of “whether it was a foolish, illogical idea or just a spontaneous choice”. But after observing that his own two sons are highly confused about their career choices, he is certain that “this single, silly, cock-eyed decision of mine suddenly made life so simple!” Interestingly, it was not the range of historic or state-of-the-art buildings that he saw and experienced on his frequent travels abroad with his family that influenced him to study architecture, but the very act of building.

The inclination first manifested itself at the public school where he studied. “I was in a very special school – the Mayo College of Ajmer. We had a lot of optional electives…and I chose cardboard modelling,” recalls Grover. “At the end of the year, the houses we built were placed together to form a city. In the four years I spent there, mine grew from a typical house with one chimney, one door and two windows to this extraordinary structure which was a copy of that half-curved crescent building, the LIC office at Nariman Point in Bombay.” When he visited his alma mater 30 years later, he was thrilled to see his work in the museum. “All three models displayed were mine, but nobody knew that,” exclaims Grover, adding that he lost no time in setting the record straight. Informing the principal that he is an architect and those were his first buildings, he insisted that the work be credited to him.

The name Karan Grover clearly means a lot to him – for when he decided to opt out of the family business (Grover Wines, run by his father Kanwal and younger brother Kapil), he chose to make his home in the city that nurtured his dreams of becoming an architect. “I wanted to have my own identity… and I couldn’t have had it in Mumbai, where I would have been Kanwal Grover’s son. I think the years spent here as a student of the MS University of Vadodara helped me to settle in,” he reflects. “We could never have done what we’re doing here anywhere else. Nisha’s school for the deaf is extraordinary…she’s changed the lives of those kids and they worship the ground that she walks on. We’ve got some extraordinary friends here, and Champaner has been a life’s mission.”

Grover’s most recent and rather resourceful brainwave is to try and promote the idea that heritage and culture are linked to development. “You have to acknowledge the role that culture and heritage play along with money and industry,” he asserts. “We are trying to make a presentation to the World Bank to give us five million dollars for Champaner – to use this as a pilot project. We want to show that Champaner can drive the region towards a sustainable future. It’s a World Heritage Site, so we will use this resource of World Heritage sites to improve the quality of life in the 91 villages of the region via tourism or by trying to encourage local industry connected to tourism – but this will be the driver as opposed to somebody putting up a steel plant.”

Grover has earned recognition as a ‘social entrepreneur’ from the Ashoka Foundation in Washington DC. “This title honours people who have a single idea that could change the world, and they have identified 700 people worldwide. I am now an Ashoka fellow for the involvement of children in conservation through the Heritage Club,” he discloses with justifiable satisfaction. He is also zealous about talking to students and young architects. “I never had this…well known architects never came and spoke to us,” he muses. “We were always taught by people who were not practising, so what we were learning was not really relevant. It is with a missionary zeal that I accept about six major lectures a year…and I use that route rather than teaching, but I choose my speaking assignments very carefully. I have a series called Be Inspired that includes food and music.”

Music is one of Grover’s abiding passions…and his tastes are eclectic – from Western and Indian classical to jazz and nostalgic pop. “I love music. I’ve even put on music at home and gone out for five hours, but not allowed anyone to put it off…so that it’s on when I come in,” he confesses sheepishly. “We’ve got a guy who opens our office at 7 a.m. to clean it…and I insist that he tunes our World Space Radio to this Western channel and listen to it before I arrive. When I walk in, that music must be on. So we’ve got music 12 hours in the office, then it’s on in the car…and it’s on at home.” He even goes to site meetings and leaves the music on in his car, much to the chagrin of his clients – so that when he opens his car door, he is already humming his favourite tune!

What Grover manages to pack into a single working day would make ordinary mortals gasp for air. Yet, he is not averse to taking on more responsibilities. Consider his new venture at the gym where he works out. “It’s a simple gym with no air conditioning,” he maintains. “One guy is a cook in a restaurant, one is a courier guy, so it’s not high society. Obviously, they don’t get to read or travel as I do…so I’ve started Gymming and Koffee with Karan. On an 8 feet by 4 feet panel, I display articles on food, vitamins, diet, how you should work out, which muscles you should focus on…anything interesting that I read.” Worried that he might disappoint his gym buddies if he did not deliver on his promise to update his column every month, he is not averse to burning the midnight oil.

Then again, that is scarcely news – for Grover is not a man who would be caught napping. By his own admission, he often sleeps the whole of Sunday…and then could do without sleep for the rest of the week! “If you have this zest for life, if you have a passion for what you do, if you believe in things, it’s amazing how you don’t get tired,” he declares. “I believe that is the adrenalin that drives me. If it really means something to you, you’ll find the time to do it. For me it’s Champaner, for Nisha it’s the deaf children, for my aunt it’s her painting. Whatever it is, you find time for the things you like to do. If you identify more things you like to be associated with, you’ll find time for more things.”

Apart from music, art, design, architecture and heritage, food is Grover’s consuming passion. While enjoying his breakfast, he plans a lunch menu…and at lunch, he concocts a dinner plan. He has 600 books on cooking and his favourite cuisine is Japanese – not just for the fine taste of sushi and sashimi, but also for its superb presentation. “The colours, textures, crockery… it’s just so beautiful!” he sighs. Though he is no chef, it’s only a matter of time. “I will become a damn good cook,” he promises, citing the reason as “I love the whole experience of eating…the way different flavours and colours are matched.” And so we leave the green Grover at his favourite pastime – cooking up grand plans and working hard to realise them all…simultaneously!