WHO
I am an architect, designer, and researcher working across architecture, urban studies, and spatial analysis.
My work began with a long-standing fascination with the car. Over time, this interest expanded beyond the car as an object toward broader questions about movement, infrastructure, and the production of space. Today, I investigate how mobility systems shape cities, landscapes, social relations, and forms of urban living.
Trained in architecture, car and transportation design, and urbanism, I work across disciplinary boundaries. Rather than treating architecture, mobility, and urban research as separate fields, I approach them as interconnected ways of understanding spatial change. My research combines architectural thinking, design inquiry, ethnographic observation, visual research, and emerging geocomputational perspectives.
Cars continue to occupy a complex place in my work. They are simultaneously machines, spaces, cultural artefacts, economic actors, and carriers of social meaning. This ambiguity remains a productive starting point for exploring broader questions about mobility and society.
For nearly two decades, I have used this website as an open archive of projects, writings, drawings, research, and ongoing investigations. It documents a long-term exploration of the relationships between movement, space, and design.
I remain interested in questions that move across scales—from domestic environments to cities, territories, and landscapes. At the centre of this work is a simple but persistent question: how does movement shape the spaces we inhabit, and how do those spaces shape us in return?
STATEMENT
My work explores how movement produces space.
Rather than understanding mobility merely as transportation, I approach it as a spatial, cultural, and political condition that continuously participates in the production of urban space.
Having completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture, a master’s degree in car and transportation design, and most recently a master’s degree in urbanism at the University of Basel, I have developed an interdisciplinary perspective that bridges the built environment with social, cultural, and spatial dynamics.
Throughout my academic and professional journey, I have engaged in workshops, courses, research projects, and design investigations examining the relationships between architecture, infrastructure, mobility, and post-industrial landscapes. These experiences have shaped my ability to connect theoretical inquiry with spatial practice while moving between different scales of observation.
A recurring theme throughout my work is the relationship between mobility and the production of space. Cars, bicycles, and infrastructures are not treated as isolated technical objects, but as spatial actors that shape how cities are organised, inhabited, and experienced.
My research has also focused on human-machine interactions in urban contexts, particularly through the lens of automobility. These experiences have strengthened my familiarity with both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including spatial analysis, visual research, and ethnographic observation.
More recently, my work has increasingly engaged with mapping, spatial data, and geocomputational approaches. I am interested in how spatial analysis can complement architectural, urban, and ethnographic perspectives, helping to reveal relationships between movement, behaviour, inequality, identity, and belonging. Rather than viewing data as an end in itself, I see it as a means of making spatial processes visible, measurable, and open to critical interpretation.
For me, academia is an open forum where methods, creativity, and ethics intersect. It is a space where social, environmental, and spatial challenges can be critically examined through research, dialogue, and experimentation. My work is informed by a broad interest in contemporary urban transformations, including questions of sustainability, adaptive infrastructures, and the evolving relationship between human and more-than-human environments.
Teaching and learning occupy a central place within my practice. I believe education should encourage curiosity, independent thinking, and the ability to connect ideas across disciplinary boundaries. Learning is rarely linear; it often emerges through unexpected encounters, visual thinking, sensory experience, and the discovery of new relationships between seemingly distant subjects. I encourage students to develop their own critical voice while remaining open to experimentation and new ways of understanding the world.
My professional experience includes collaborative research and teaching roles that brought together architectural theory, urban history, and design practice. I continue to view research, teaching, and design not as separate activities, but as interconnected forms of knowledge production.
This website brings together ongoing research, design work, writings, visual explorations, and long-term investigations into the relationships between mobility, space, and everyday life.
THANKS
I owe my deepest gratitude to:
My father, Muzaffer Tulay (1947–2016), and my mother, Vahide Tulay, for their unwavering support throughout my life.
Prof. Dr. Ferhan Yürekli (1945–2016), Professor of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University, whose guidance continues to shape my work and thinking.
This online portfolio is dedicated to the memory of my father, Muzaffer Tulay, a talented craftsman, whose warm hand accompanied me during our time together on this earth.
And to everyone with whom I have shared moments under sun and shadow.