Platinum 3D Printed Forms and Products Design · 2020
Unream Voxel Printed Lamp
by Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng
- A' Design Award 2020 Platinum Winner in 3D Printed Forms and Products Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: MIT HCI Engineering Group
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 1,393,871
- Verification code F2E45DF01F · Verify this award
About Unream Voxel Printed Lamp
Unream is a lamp produced with multi-material voxel 3D printing. The surface is covered with lenticular lenses that are printed together with the color content. Unream shows different colors from different viewing angles, so the object appears to display a moving image when a person walks past. The lamp acts as an object in daylight and as a light source at night. The height is 220 mm and the width is 100 mm. A computational workflow assigns material properties to each voxel, which allows optical textures on free-form surfaces.
This sculptural work exemplifies the remarkable creative possibilities emerging at the intersection of computational design and advanced fabrication technologies, representing a significant contribution to the evolving field of digitally conceived decorative arts. The designer appears to have embraced the inherent characteristics of voxel-based three-dimensional printing, transforming what might conventionally be considered process artifacts into expressive visual elements that define the object's distinctive aesthetic identity. The flowing chromatic passages moving through cerulean, violet, magenta, and white suggest a deliberate orchestration of color data within the digital model, allowing pigmented materials to intermingle during the printing process in ways that evoke natural phenomena such as geological striations, fluid dynamics, or the banding patterns found in certain minerals. The biomorphic form, with its stacked bulbous segments and organic asymmetry, references historical vessel typologies while simultaneously asserting its contemporary technological origins through the precise horizontal banding that traces its layer-by-layer emergence. One observes how the translucency of certain passages creates opportunities for the functional lighting element to transform the object when illuminated, suggesting a dual existence as sculptural presence in daylight and luminous beacon in darkness. The work participates in ongoing dialogues within design culture regarding authenticity of process, the aesthetic potential of machine-made marks, and the reconciliation of digital precision with organic irregularity. Viewers might contemplate how this object challenges traditional hierarchies separating craft, industrial production, and fine art, inviting consideration of whether the designer's intervention in algorithmic parameters constitutes a new form of making deserving its own critical vocabulary.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Unream is the first 3D printed object that displays dynamically by itself. With the most advanced multi-material voxel printing technology, we create 'dream-like' materials that used to exist only in the digital world. Covered by lenticular lenses, Unream is a daytime artifact and night lamp revealing dynamic colors in different viewing angles. With Unream, we reimagined the relationship between human, space, and objects by expanding binary material presence to dynamic material experience.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Height: 220 mm * Width: 100mm
- Tags
- 3D printing, Multi-material printing, voxel printing, lenticular effect, lighting design, dynamic material, material interface, illusory material, optical textiles
- Production Technology
- Most of the material is a single layer of a separate entity that only exists uniformly on a product surface. With Unream, we break this inertial thinking by embedding information into three-dimensional matter (voxel) and assign different material properties to each voxel in multi-material printing. Designers can use our computational workflow to create object interfaces with various material distributions that can display unique material expressions.
- Design Challenge
- Structural textures are extremely hard to be applied on a free-form model using 3D printing. With our workflow, not only structural textures but also optical textures can be applied on any 3D surface. With Unream, we've developed a computational workflow that can assign different material properties to each voxel in multi-material printing.
- Project Duration
- The project started in June 2019 at MIT and finished in February 2020 at San Fransisco.
- Operation Flow
- When walking pass the object, it looks like a digital screen with ambient animation.
- Research
- Unream is one of the products designed with "illusory material": a MIT research about 3D printing lenticular effect. The lenticular effect people can create, and the quality of optical aberrations is highly restricted by existing manufacturability in optical lens and printer resolution. Normally, the making of lenticular sheet and content images are separate and handled by different people. With multi-material 3D printing, we can 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. At the product/object level, it is possible to apply the lenticular effect on any form, manipulating the optical properties of any object surface.
- Inspiration
- There are increasing conversations around interactive and responsive materials, most of them require additional medium like electronic input. We want to create a new material organization that responds directly to user intervention or the environment. With multi-material 3D printing, we envision a future where designers can manipulate color, texture, and reflectivity of materials freely, creating objects with unique optical expressions that can be never achieved with other methods.
- Image Credits
- Jiani Zeng
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng, 2020
Colors of Unream Voxel Printed Lamp
Get Unream Voxel Printed Lamp
Material Innovation and Computational Design Research
We pioneer illusory materials through advanced 3D printing, creating dynamic optical experiences that blur physical and digital boundaries. Our MIT-affiliated research transforms how designers manipulate color, texture, and material properties for revolutionary product interfaces.
G0E2 ShopDesign Interview about Unream Voxel Printed Lamp
With this design, I hope to blur the line between the digital and physical world, bringing "impossible" materials to real-world product design. With the newest fabrication technology and computational power such as multi-material printing, 4D printing, soft robotics, we can embed information into three-dimensional matter (voxel), expanding binary material presence to dynamic material experience in everyday products.
A computational workflow that allows creating optical effect on any free-form surface.
This limited edition is available for sale. Please contact Designer Jiani Zeng at jnzeng7@gmail.com for more information. It will also be exhibited in some design exhibitions and conferences.
3 months research on lenticular printing and voxel printing, 2 weeks on this particular form.
Unream is one of the products designed with "illusory material": a new material organization that responds directly to the user intervention or the environment, creating 'dream-like' physical materials that used to exists only in the digital world. With illusory material, we envision a future where designers can manipulate the color, texture, and reflectivity of materials across time and different viewing angles; Imagine the future of color creation is not based on layers of chemical paints, but a combination with optical 3D printed optical lenses and simple color blocks; imagine a physical material can display dynamically by itself without electronic input; imagine an invisible object that is informative, a hard object that feels soft....Please visit our website for more details: https://www.illusorymaterial.com/
The copyright belongs to Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng, we will be selling it. However, it needs lots of manual processing and it's limited edition for now.
Our love for new tech and multi-material 3D printing. We are a team of an industrial designer, an architect, and researchers from MIT and Harvard.
Prof. Axel Kilian from MIT architecture, for pointing out and clarifying the research direction that I truly believe in and enjoy doing; for pushing me beyond my comfort field in industrial design, to think big and go deeper in design fundamentally; for all the in-depth, critical and honest feedback - always challenge me to push an idea further.
Prof. Stefanie Mueller from MIT EECS, for all her inspiring work and conversations in HCI, digital fabrications and multi-material printing; for her great trust and freedom she gave me in exploring digital materials; for her openness and encouragement towards any student who has passion in personal fabrication and for being so generous in sharing her knowledge in the field of user interaction design.
Prof. Stefanie Mueller from MIT EECS, for all her inspiring work and conversations in HCI, digital fabrications and multi-material printing; for her great trust and freedom she gave me in exploring digital materials; for her openness and encouragement towards any student who has passion in personal fabrication and for being so generous in sharing her knowledge in the field of user interaction design.
Anyone who appreciates design with materials that cannot be seen from traditional production.
There is no similar design in the market so far, we invented the pipeline for "illusory material" to be applied in any 3D form.
Unreal+dream. We are not very good at naming....
Rhino, grasshopper, GrabCAD Print, Stratasys
The material and production - it can not be produced using any other machine other than Stratasys J750.
The design is done by Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng, supervised by Prof. Axel Kilian and Stefanie Mueller.
This design is about technology: Multi-material 3D printing. We invented a computational workflow that allows every designer to play with CMF or even material properties that never existed before in the design process, creating dream-like material and apply them into real-world product design. This project is an envision of future design methodology using computation power with the most advanced 3D printing technology in the world: multi-material voxel printing.
The research is about 3D printing lenticular effect, more on digital fabrication and computation.
Structural textures are extremely hard to be applied on a free-form model using 3D printing. With our workflow, not only structural textures but also optical textures can be applied on any 3D surface. With Unream, we've developed a computational workflow that can assign different material properties to each voxel in multi-material printing.
We want our design and vision to have an impact on the designer society.
extensive research. keep exploring.