Brian Titus sees architecture as a way of life
As a child growing up in Peoria, Ill., Brian Titus, LEED AP BD+C, AIA, NCARB, would take Sunday drives with his family to special places in Illinois. On one visit to see his aunt and uncle, who were farmers, they stopped in to see the John Deere & Co. headquarters, a Corten steel, metal and glass building in Moline, Ill.
The experience changed his life.
“After seeing it, I knew I was going to be an architect and I was never going to change my mind,” he says. Not only did he not change his mind, Titus has gone on to design several successful and creative metal-based architectural projects in his 25 years of national and international practice as designer, project architect and principal. He is currently director of design and vice president for the Atlanta office of LEO A DALY, an internationally renowned architecture, planning, engineering, interior design and program management firm._244x355.jpg)
Education and experience
Titus received his Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. His Master of Architecture degree is from Clemson University in Clemson, S.C. Growing up in Illinois, he was exposed to architecture at a very young age. “Chicago has always been a leading city for architecture,” he says. “The Sears Tower and the Hancock building were being built when I was a kid, and at the time they were the tallest buildings in the world.”
At Clemson, Titus spent a semester studying abroad in Italy, which he calls “a wonderful experience.” He started working for architects when he was in school during the summers. He also worked in between undergraduate and graduate school.
The first job Titus worked on where metal was a factor was right after graduate school. “It was a library and administration building for a technical college in Pendleton, S.C.,” he says. “It’s all metal. This was in 1987 and metal panels have evolved a lot since then. The metal panels used back then are not the metal panels used today. Back then, metal panels signified the future; they were a futuristic building material. Metal can be used in a lot of different ways. But using metal on the exterior like that was a very contemporary thing to do at the time.”
Japan and Kuala Lumpur
After his South Carolina experience, Titus went to work in Tokyo for a year for Ichiro Ebihara Architects and Associates. “At that time, Ichiro Ehibara was the oldest living architect in Tokyo,” he says. “His firm played a large role in the rebuilding of Tokyo and Japan after the war.
“Tokyo is a very different environment to work in. The scale is different from anywhere else I’ve been and I’ve been to many different places. The reverence for creativity and design in Tokyo is different than here in the United States. People photograph buildings all the time here in the United States. If you took a picture of a building in Japan, you could have someone from inside the building run outside and tell you, ‘You can’t photograph this building because it’s a work of art!’ It’s a very different way of looking at and respecting creativity.”
After Japan, Titus went to work for Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates in Hamden, Conn. “It is a successor firm to Eero Saarinen,” he says. “Eero is a historic figure in architecture and so are Kevin and John.” Ironically, it was Saarinen who designed the John Deere & Co. headquarters building, his initial inspiration to become an architect. “As a kid, I had no idea I would later go and work for the firm that designed that building,” Titus says.
A noteworthy design project that he collaborated on while working for Roche is the Maxis Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Maxis Tower, or Menara Maxis in the Malay language, is an office skyscraper that houses the headquarters of Maxis Communications and Tanjong Plc Group of Companies. This 50-floor high-rise building, which stands next to the Petronas Towers, features an aluminum and glass-clad façade, as well as metal panels and metal awnings.
“The metal panel is a contrasting moment to where we have glass,” Titus explains. “At the time, there was no such thing as LEED, but sustainability has been around for as long as I’ve been in this profession. One of the things we had to accommodate when we were designing this building was solar shading at all times of the day. We looked at office occupancy times and other factors to come up with a solution. There are awnings and solar shades on the building’s outside that shade the windows so when you are inside you don’t need horizontal blinds or shades. You can look out and you don’t have direct sunlight coming into the space. It’s a high-rise building with awnings going all the way around it. Metal awnings were a common feature in the firm’s architecture.”
Daily Daly design
Founded in 1915 and headquartered in Omaha, Neb., LEO A DALY’s portfolio includes award-winning projects in 77 countries, all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The firm currently employs approximately 1,000 architects, planners, engineers and interior designers in more than 30 offices worldwide.
Since working at LEO A DALY, one of Titus’ most innovative metal-based projects has been the Georgia Gwinnett College Library in Lawrenceville, Ga. The library, completed in 2010, was envisioned, designed and built as a “Knowledge Center.”
Metal was used in different ways in this project such as defining the program elements and the building’s planes. A curved metal arch known as the “arch of knowledge” acts as a portal to the campus green.
“On the outside of the library, we have a curved arch which is very symbolic of that institution,” Titus explains. “Landscaping metal accents, such as bicycle racks, site lights and lighted bollards, around the building maintain a liaison between the plaza and the project structure. We also brought the metal concept inside as part of an integrated design. We wrapped the interior columns along the glass wall with metal to make it more prominent in that open space. From the guardrails on the grand stair and balconies to the metal lay in ceiling tiles, miscellaneous furniture pieces and metal shelves, we used metal in every possible way to blend the outside with the inside.”
Staying green
On addressing the environmental push and the green movement, Titus quotes LEO A DALY’s motto and says, “Sustainability is our nature.” He feels sustainability and energy-consciousness have always been going on in this industry, including when he was a student in school.
“The sustainability rating system is new and different, depending on where you work around the globe,” he says. “Here, the U.S. Green Building Council follows the LEED system, while China and the Middle East follow different systems. At LEO A DALY, we design all our projects to sustainable standards. Whether the client wants to go through the LEED process or not, we are still designing for sustainability.”
Every LEO A DALY office has a sustainability officer or champion. Most designers are LEED-accredited design professionals. “It’s just normal behavior,” he says. “The impact of LEED system at first is going to be new and different, but down the road it will be very common place.”
Metal and success
Titus likes designing with metal because of its many applications. “You can use metal in a lot of ways,” he says. “It is a very versatile exterior material, but it is an interior material as well. It can be on a wall, or it can be on a ceiling. It’s obviously a component of any glazing system. We have planned existing projects where metal is a strong component. Metal is always on our mind.
“If you look at the way Frank Gehry uses metal on a building-very, very sculpturally both inside and outside-and contrast that with my first metal-based projects in the late 1980s, the current metal technology, and the sophisticated coatings and colors available on metal panels are very, very different. The looks that you can have now with metal are totally different than what I worked with in the late 1980s. You can explore a lot of new solutions with metal.”
What brings Titus client success? “Listening to your client and collaborating with them brings success,” he says. “Listening to clients is critical. You do it with every single client. Take the Georgia Gwinnett College Library, for example. That is a program custom tailored for the client on that site. We try to focus and aim high, and then deliver.”
His belief is that architecture is a way of life; it is not just a job, it is a way of existence. He stresses patience and good design, but acknowledges that neither of these two traits comes easily. “If good design was easy we’d see more of it,” he says. “It’s difficult and anybody in the profession who thinks architectural design is easy, it is not. It takes a long time for projects to come to fruition, depending on what the project’s typology is and what a client’s goals are. You can start working on a project and it never gets realized, sometimes it can take 10 years, but at a minimum the life of a project is probably three years. More complex projects take longer. It’s a way of life and you have to be patient.”
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ArchConnect
What’s on your iPod while you work?
U2
What do you do on weekends?
I like to play golf. One of the things I like about golf is it is static. You are the one who puts the ball in motion, not unlike design. Designers put things in motion with our clients. I like all the professional golfers from Clemson University and University of Illinois.
What is your favorite book?
“A Season on the Brink” by John Feinstein. It’s the book that thrust him into the public spotlight. He spent a season with Indiana college basketball coach Bobby Knight. It’s my favorite because it is about how preparation yields success.
What’s your favorite app on your phone or iPad?
I don’t use many apps as weird as that sounds, maybe I am old. Rhapsody is good for music. I use MLBTV, they have an “at-bat” app.
Where is your favorite place to vacation?
I don’t have one, I like going to new places.
What historical figure would you most like to have dinner with and why?
Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe