Material Resonance
Exploring how materials shape spatial atmosphere and tell stories.
- My role
Research, scenes & moving image
- Year
2025
- Context
Design Practice graduation project
- Tools
Unreal Engine 5
Project context
Material Resonance is a spatial narrative project built with Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), exploring how materials constitute atmosphere from a phenomenological perspective. Repeated adjustments to light, materials, colour, shadows, environmental particles and effects create an immersive digital environment, showing how atmosphere emerges through subtle changes that are often overlooked but can still be felt.
A still-life composition juxtaposes materials and climate inside and outside a window to explore habitability and isolation. Advances in efficiency, durability and insulation make interiors more comfortable and more enclosed. The narrative examines the resulting sensory estrangement: direct experiences of seasons, temperature changes and material textures diminish. Atmosphere remains perceptible but becomes difficult to understand and describe, weakening emotional connections with nature. Slow changes in materials and environment encourage sustained observation, echoing the cumulative effects of climate change that are difficult to notice.
The project also addresses climate justice, examining the environmental burden of producing and using building materials to improve interiors, and the risk of transferring those costs to homeless people who lack equivalent shelter and face worsening weather directly. It considers the potential “climate violence” behind indoor comfort.