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Benay Gürsoy Toykoç

  • Associate Professor of Architecture

220 Stuckeman

Benay Toykoç

Biography

Benay Gürsoy Toykoç is an associate professor of architecture in the Stuckeman School at Penn State, and the founder and director of ForMat (Form and Matter) Lab at the Stuckeman School’s Center for Design Computing. Founded in 2019, ForMat Lab integrates design research, fabrication, and education, investigating the dynamic interplay between form, matter, fabrication, and performance. The lab’s work focuses on adaptive robotic fabrication and biofabrication, with a particular emphasis on fungal biomaterials and mycelium-based composites. Collaborating with mycologists, biologists, materials scientists, and engineers, the lab advances interdisciplinary approaches to material-driven design.

Gürsoy Toykoç earned her Ph.D. in Architectural Design Computing from Istanbul Technical University. Her doctoral research investigated how material manipulation and material behavior can become integral parts of the computational design processes.

Collected Works

Decorative wall installation featuring textured hexagonal panels arranged on a geometric honeycomb framework, with a blurred person reaching upward in the foreground.
Close-up of textured hexagonal acoustic panels mounted on a geometric honeycomb wall framework, with a hexagonal panel displaying the text “FORMAT LAB.”
Side-by-side images of oyster mushrooms growing on a cultivation substrate, including a close-up view of the mushrooms’ delicate gills and layered structure.
Three-panel collage showing a robotic fabrication process for mycelium-based material, including textured finished panels and an industrial robotic arm depositing material into a patterned form.
Side-by-side images of a design installation featuring glowing orange-red, flower-shaped elements embedded in textured white forms; one image shows the illuminated display in a dark setting.
Four-panel close-up collage of mycelium-coated textile material, showing surface texture, layered cross-sections, water resistance with a droplet on the surface, and fibrous material structure.
Four-panel collage showing the fabrication of a knit-grid shell structure, including panels filled with wood chips, mycelium growth over the surface, the underside of the assembled form, and a researcher working with the material in a lab.
Outdoor pavilion-like sculpture made of interconnected white geometric blocks, installed on a grassy lawn with brick walls and leafless trees in the background.