Umeå School of Architecture warmly welcomes students, staff and the public to a lecture within' the open lecture framework UMA Talks. The lecture presents ongoing research at the ForMat (Form and Matter) Lab at Penn State University, directed by Benay Gürsoy. The work examines reciprocal relationships between form, matter, fabrication, and performance through computational design and digital fabrication. Recent projects explore robotic fabrication, biofabrication, and additive manufacturing, with particular focus on mycelium-based composites and other bio-derived materials as sustainable alternatives for the built environment. Across these projects, the research challenges the conventional paradigm of total control in digital fabrication. Instead, it investigates how material variability, biological growth, and environmental conditions introduce uncertainty into fabrication.
Benay Gürsoy 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. Gürsoy earned her PhD 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.
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The UMA Talks are a free and accessible series of events. The series is devoted to advancing architectural discourse from both an international perspective and local perspective, and strives to enable the public, students, teachers, and researchers both within architecture and from other fields to get insight to and participate in the educational activities and academic research taking place at Umeå School of Architecture. Theorist, practitioners, artists, and other relevant guests are invited to speak or to participate in roundtable conversations or similar formats. Read more about UMA Talks.