ForMat Lab • directed by Benay Gürsoy

The acoustic wall with mycelium-based composites that we designed, fabricated and built at the Provost’s office at Penn State 🍄 • We enjoyed working on this project quite a lot. The acoustic panels are attached with magnets. They can easily be removed, rotated, displaced, replaced, etc. • We will go back and make acoustic measurements of the room to see the effects of the panels on reducing the reverberation time. • Project team (in alphabetical order): Aisa Shams (@aisashams ) Alale Mohseni (@alale_mohseni_ ) Alime Sanli (@alimesanli ) Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) • More about the project here: http://bit.ly/4hBqsMJ • #mycelium #myceliumcomposite #myceliumbasedcomposites #myceliumcomposites #mycomaterials #mycoacoustics #fungalbiomaterials #biofabrication #formatlab

Material research, with a side of mushrooms! • We’ve been awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development through the Manufacturing PA Innovation Program for our project: “Farm-to-Buildings: Upcycling Mushroom Farming Waste to Produce Sustainable Biomaterials.” • For this project, we partnered with Phillips Mushroom Farms (@phillipsgourmetmushrooms ), the largest specialty mushroom grower in Pennsylvania, to repurpose the waste generated from mushroom cultivation, commonly known as spent mushroom substrate, as a growth medium for mycelium-based composites intended for building components. • Here, you see members of the team Alime Şanlı (@alimesanli ) and Aisa Shams (@aisashams ) growing beautiful gray oyster mushrooms from scratch at the Mushroom Research Center. Over the holidays, we harvested them and shared them with friends and family. Yes, everyone experimented with different recipes! • Next up: the team will begin making composites and testing them to characterize their insulative performance, expanding upon previous research we started with @dognidarko back in Spring 2024 when she was at ForMat Lab as a visiting PhD student. Stay tuned!

Throwback to Fungi Futures Exhibit at @con.temporarycrafts in Bremen-Germany in Fall 2024. • ForMat Lab took part in the exhibition with three projects. Shown here is a 3D printed mycelium-based composite acoustic tile as part of the MycoPrint 2.0, the “voltron” project in the lab — soon to be published! • Thanks Philine von Düszeln for the invitation and the photos! • Listing below the current and former ForMat lab members who contributed to the three projects exhibited: Ali Ghazvinian (@aghazstudio ), Alale Mohseni (@alale_mohseni_ ), Özgüç Bertuğ Çapunaman (@ozgucbertug ), Natalie Walter (@nataliewalter24 ), Chiara Dognini (@dognidarko ), Paniz Farrokhsiar (@paniz__f ), Alireza Zamani (@alirezazamani_s ) and Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ). • Photo credit: Philine von Düszeln • Check the link below for more information and full credits of the projects: http://bit.ly/3YFszqL

Teaching Recap • Spring 2026 ARCH 132 - Basic Design Studio • More from the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studios... In Spring, students worked on designing small scale dwellings / microhomes at Hartley Woods at the Arboretum at Penn State. This project marks their first “building” design. • Shown here are the works of students from Section 4: [1-5]: Mia Barnes (@themialisa ) [6-11]: Lucy Daley (@lucy.daley_ ) [12-14]: Melanie Marroquin (@melaniemarroquin_ ) [15-17]: Eli Rosenberry (@elirosenberry ) • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Spring semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @delphinelewandowski , Eric Sutherland and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio

Teaching Recap • Spring 2026 ARCH 132 - Basic Design Studio • More from the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studios... In Spring, students worked on designing small scale dwellings / microhomes at Hartley Woods at the Arboretum at Penn State. This project marks their first “building” design. • Shown here are the works of students from Section 4: [1-7]: Cecilia Del Duco (@ceciliadelduco ) [8-13]: Megan Kort (@megan.aak ) [14-19]: Maura Nagle (@maura_nagle ) • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Spring semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @delphinelewandowski , Eric Sutherland and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio

Teaching Recap • Spring 2026 ARCH 132 - Basic Design Studio • This year, I coordinated the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studios in Fall and Spring. In Spring, students worked on designing small scale dwellings / microhomes at Hartley Woods at the Arboretum at Penn State. This project marks their first “building” design. • Shown here are the works of students from Section 4: [1-6]: Shelby Manges (@shelby_manges ) [7-12]: Evan Burns (@skinnymanunderice ) [13-18]: Daniel Sun. • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Spring semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @delphinelewandowski , Eric Sutherland and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio

Teaching Recap • Spring 2026 ARCH 132 - Basic Design Studio • In Spring, students in the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studio worked on designing small scale dwellings / microhomes. First couple of weeks of the semester was dedicated to studying various microhome precedents mainly through iterative drawing and model-making. • Shown here are drawings and models of various precedents by students in Section 4. 3-5: Cecilia Del Duco @ceciliadelduco 6-7: Lucy Daley @lucy.daley_ 8-9: Shelby Manges @shelby_manges 10-11: Evan Burns @skinnymanunderice 12: Megan Kort @megan.aak 13: Mia Barnes @themialisa 15: Maura Nagle @maura_nagle 16: Melanie Marroquin @melaniemarroquin_ 17: Eli Rosenberry @elirosenberry 18: Daniel Sun • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Spring semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @delphinelewandowski , Eric Sutherland and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #formspaceorder #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio

Teaching Recap • Fall 2025 ARCH 131 - Basic Design Studio • Second half of the Fall semester in the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studio was dedicated to craft. All students first got their woodshop and lasercutter trainings. They then designed and built “interventions on and/or around their studio desk spaces.” • Section 3 students individually designed and fabricated paper lanterns, while collectively designing and building customizable shelving units to expand their desk spaces and hold their paper lanterns above their desks. In doing so, they used all the fabrication equipment available at school, from woodworking tools to cnc-milling machine, from lasercutters to 3D printers. • Shown here are the works of students from Section 3: Angela Alacio Rivas @angelaalacio.r Griffin Tyler @gt_des1gn Emily Zezyus @emilyzezyus Anusha Nayak @anusha.nayak18 Michael Wood @mw567282 Kat Carrol @kitkat07180 Cadence Killian @cadence_killian Aubrey Olson @aubreyoli Dylan Ngo Elyssa Dzyak • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Fall semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @clarissa.arch @panurban and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio #polyhedra #geometry

Teaching Recap • Fall 2025 ARCH 131 - Basic Design Studio • The first half of the Fall semester in the first-year undergraduate Basic Design studio was dedicated to a series of exercises in which the students explored form, space and order. Shown here are some of the photos Section 3 students took using the “light boxes” they built, along with the components they derived and built from these images to recreate and study spatial constructs. • Amazing students of Section 3 whose works are shown here are: Angela Alacio Rivas @angelaalacio.r Griffin Tyler @gt_des1gn Emily Zezyus @emilyzezyus Anusha Nayak @anusha.nayak18 Michael Wood @mw567282 Kat Carrol @kitkat07180 Cadence Killian @cadence_killian Aubrey Olson @aubreyoli Dylan Ngo Elyssa Dzyak • Instructor: Benay Gursoy (@pusurkusur ) TA: Luke Gochis (@luke_gochis ) • Fall semester full studio teaching team was: @jameskalsbeek @afro_tecture_studio @houmanriazi @clarissa.arch @panurban and myself, as well as our TAs @mahtabkhabir @luke_gochis @yasaman_ghf • #basicdesign #formspaceorder #beginningdesign #basicdesignstudio

We're in This Together Benay Gürsoy Toykoç (Assoc. Prof. of Architecture) Director of ForMat Lab @format.lab Penn State University 16 March 2026 Monday 5 PM (GMT+3, Istanbul) / 10 AM (GMT-4, Pennsylvania) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89417876985?pwd=YzRvNyN1Dur1rVfPkNuZQ3ptd2GDsn.1 Meeting ID: 894 1787 6985 Passcode: 958643 In Spring 2026, within Tactical Imaginaries: Machines · Islands · Aggregative Multiplicities studio, we are pleased to host Benay Gürsoy Toykoç for an online talk entitled We’re in This Together. As part of our first studio module, Machines, we are building open-source learning instruments and engaging in hands-on material testing. The module situates making at the intersection of construction, critical practices, and ecologies, not as production for its own sake, but as a method of inquiry. Benay Gürsoy Toykoç’s talk is imagined as an opening gesture toward cultivating a maker culture within the studio. She will reflect on the community she initiated at Istanbul Bilgi University through Hacking Materials and Production Methods, and how that ethos of collaborative experimentation evolved within a different scale and research context in the United States. In her work, “making” becomes more than fabrication; it becomes a medium for gathering, knowledge-sharing, and collective formation. At this early stage of the semester, this spirit of building-together feels especially meaningful for our students.

More photos and videos from the Code & Craft exhibition opening, this time from @pujabhagat1417 - former ForMat Lab member who is now living in London. • Exhibition curated by @cluster__crafts . • ForMat Lab team who contributed to the work: @aisashams @alale_mohseni_ @alimesanli @m_jjinee • Thanks so much Puja for the photos and videos!

Everything made it to the Swiss Church in London, the exhibition venue, safe and sound! Code and Craft exhibition by @cluster__crafts opened tonight! • A big thanks to @deniztekkul for these photos from the opening. Wish we could also be there in person. • ForMat Lab team members who contributed, in alphabetical order: @aisashams @alale_mohseni_ @alimesanli @m_jjinee • Thanks again @frcj for the support!