Unream: A New Dimension in Design

Revolutionizing Material Experience with Multi-Material Voxel Printing

Unream is a daytime artifact and night lamp that reveals dynamic colors from different viewing angles. Inspired by the increasing conversations around interactive and responsive materials, Zeng and Deng envisioned a future where designers could freely manipulate the color, texture, and reflectivity of materials, creating objects with unique optical expressions that could never be achieved with other methods.

Unream's unique properties lie in its use of the most advanced multi-material voxel printing technology. This technology allows the designers to create 'dream-like' materials that used to exist only in the digital world. When viewed from different angles, Unream appears to be a digital screen with ambient animation, blurring the line between the digital and physical world.

The realization of Unream involved a significant shift from traditional design thinking. Instead of using a single layer of a separate entity that only exists uniformly on a product surface, Zeng and Deng embedded information into three-dimensional matter (voxel) and assigned different material properties to each voxel in multi-material printing. This innovative approach allowed them to create object interfaces with various material distributions that display unique material expressions.

Unream is a product of extensive research at MIT about 3D printing lenticular effect, termed "illusory material". The designers were able to design the optical lens together with the image content, experimenting with different shapes and depths of the lens, surface form, and even the transparency and hardness of the image content. This research led to the development of a computational workflow that can assign different material properties to each voxel in multi-material printing, overcoming the challenge of applying structural and optical textures on any 3D surface.

Standing at a height of 220 mm and a width of 100mm, Unream is a testament to the transformative power of design and technology. In the daytime, it reflects sunlight to display dynamically, and at night, it uses artificial lights to create a fantasy-like atmosphere. With Unream, Zeng and Deng have brought impossible materials to real-world product design, marking a significant milestone in the field of design and technology.

Unream's intellectual property rights belong to Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng. The design, which started in June 2019 at MIT and finished in February 2020 at San Francisco, has been recognized with the prestigious Platinum A' Design Award for its exceptional innovation and contribution to societal wellbeing.