Being born and raised in Tondo, Manila, William was exposed to the social and personal scale of spaces. It had become natural for him to appreciate how spaces allow people to converge and converse with each other. It developed in him an interest in investigating how life in the city works, which later on becomes evident in his work. William also grew up loving comics. Reading Spider Man influenced him tremendously as he sketched and recreated the buildings, city sites, and the people in what he would read. His love for reading branched out to fantasy and fictional books, which opened up his mind and allowed him to imagine and perceive a world he could only dream to create in real life.

William Ti, Jr. is the Principal Architect of WTA Architecture and Design Studio, which he founded in 2007. William started with designing houses. Even in the most personal type of edifice – a home, he still worked on incorporating a more personal scale of architecture. By designing spaces where the natural and innate characteristics of people can take place, he believed that family members can interact and build better relationships, especially in times of technology and gadget dependency.

A mind-set of growing and building something bigger and sustainable gave him a new business framework. His first eureka moment was when he figured that evolving to designing commercial and retail spaces, particularly banks, would give him a stable flow of projects on the assumption that banks consistently opened new branches. A second strategy came about from the idea of doing bigger (and consequently better) every year. The measure for this strategy would be in revenue, ideally doubling the revenue every year. The third strategy was formed from the realization that he did not want the firm to develop into a manufacturing office, duplicating and tweaking old concepts to gain more projects fast. Instead, William wanted to inculcate in his team a culture of creativity, involvement, and ownership, encouraging them to develop new ideas and explore new concepts on their own.

One challenge William had to face was having to go through a change in management. A realization that he and a partner no longer shared the same vision was antecedent to a separation within the company. This meant starting over and learning how to take on full responsibility over the changes and growth of WTA. Determined to make this decision count taught him about growth. For William, “growth for the sake of growth must be tempered with meaningful work.”

William’s main role in WTA is to generate ideas, concepts, designs, theories, and values. In the studio, he focuses on building a company of thinkers. He instils a culture of trying new things, experimenting, and sharing new ideas. He encourages people to see for themselves what social architecture is and how it can alter the movement and flow within their designs.

In WTA, empowered employees are key to each one’s success and the success of the studio. With about 100 employees under his leadership, he is given the opportunity to make a big impact. The culture of experimenting and developing a process to create something different or better allows the studio to be creative and become a generator on its own. For William, a passion for being explorative and experimental allows him to move forward and do differently. He sees this passion and work ethic as the studio’s mantra.

WTA Architecture and Design Studio aims to use design excellence as the main gauge of architecture and to create a design process where idea generation forms the core of the studio. By believing that design is a process, and improving that process to produce the best architecture, the studio believes it should produce the best kind of architecture it can build.

William will be opening a WTA office in Shenzhen by the first quarter of 2020, to establish and grow a Philippine based design firm into a regional, if not global firm. He aims to look for impactful projects, hoping to further spread his vision across other countries. The most rewarding aspect of William’s job is being able to affect physical and tangible changes in the way cities are being built. “Being able to say ‘I want this’ and being able to actually do that is very rewarding.” Being able to figure new things out, finding ideas, seeing the social impact of what he does is something that drives him.

His advice for readers: “Architecture must burn. One must always have passion and ambition because passion means you will keep on going because you love something and ambition means you will always want to be better and so you keep learning. You need passion and ambition to do what you want.”