A native of Turkey, Özel received his Masters of Architecture from Yale University and his Bachelor of Arts in architecture, sculpture, and philosophy from Bennington College. Before founding Ozel Office, he worked in the architecture offices of Frank Gehry, Rafael Vinoly, Jürgen Mayer and others. During his time at Gehry, he worked on the designs of notable cultural projects, such as the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. His recent award-winning projects, ranging from technology focused buildings to interactive installations, received mainstream media attention and were featured by CNN, BBC, Euronews, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Huffington Post and Wired. His works were exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Istanbul Modern, Saatchi Gallery London, Istanbul Design Biennial, MassMOCA, Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest. His most recent Mixed Reality installation “Persuasion Machines” was listed by Hillary Clinton as “amazing and not to be missed.” Özel’s recent design and research on building scale 3D printing was awarded one of the top prizes at NASA’s 3D Printed Habitats Competition for the first mission to Mars. He is a regular speaker in architecture, tech industry and design events, including a talk on the future of mobility at Los Angeles Auto Show and a keynote on robotic architecture and interactive environments at Google’s annual design conference Span. Özel was recently listed as one of the most influential Turkish people in the USA.