Space Talks No. 115 - Detours, U-Turns, Breakthroughs: Building a Career That Evolves With You

Date: March 17, 2026 - Tuesday

Time: 14:00

Place: santralistanbul Campus, KD6-Kazandibi

Speaker: Onur Yüce Gün

“Detours, U-Turns, Breakthroughs: Building a Career That Evolves With You”

We are pleased to announce that Onur Yüce Gün will be our guest with his talk “Detours, U-Turns, Breakthroughs: Building a Career That Evolves With You” in the 116th episode of Mekan Konuşmaları, hosted by the students of the Graduate Programmes in Architecture at BİLGİ.

Success and failure rarely unfold the way we imagine early in our careers. Goals shift, opportunities appear and disappear, and the path that once seemed clear becomes far more tangled. This talk explores that reality honestly, without pretending there is a perfect formula for a meaningful professional life.

Drawing on his nonlinear path, from MIT’s Design and Computation program (SM, PhD) to his current role as Global Director of Computational Design at New Balance, Onur Yüce Gün shares a journey shaped by curiosity, detours, false starts, and unexpected breakthroughs. The focus is not on achievements, but on the questions that guided each turn: Why do we pursue certain goals? What makes work meaningful? How do we keep growing in a world that refuses to stay still?

Across experiences in academia, architecture, research, and industry, Onur reflects on what to hold onto, what to let go of, and how meaning often emerges sideways, through attention, honesty, and openness to change. Rather than prescribing a path, this talk offers perspectives that anyone can use to shape their own evolving trajectory.

Rather than prescribing a career path, this session encourages you to notice what energizes you, understand what you value, and begin shaping a life, not just a job, that can adapt and remain genuinely yours.

BIO:

Onur Yüce Gün is a designer, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of computation and meaning; a theme reflected across his writing on creativity, cognition, and design practice.  Trained at MIT with a Masters and Ph.D. in Design and Computation, he is the Global Director of Computational Design at New Balance, where he leads the company’s computational design ecosystem and contributes to advances in AI‑driven design, 3D printing, and fit innovation.  He previously led the Computational Geometry Group at KPF NY, co‑founded the architecture program at Istanbul Bilgi University, and helped build the computational design team at Samsung Research America. He has taught or lectured at MIT, Harvard, RISD, Pratt Institute, and UAI, grounding his work in structure, embedded cognition, and practical insight over hype.