Designer Matter: A perspective

The surge of modern techniques to fabricate structured materials paired with our ever deeper understanding of complex forms of matter present us with the opportunity to make and study dramatically new forms of designed materials and structures. This movement is being fueled by recent and rapid developments in a variety of fields, including soft matter, materials science, computer assisted design and digital fabrication. Here, we present an overview of these recent trends based on a multidisciplinary meeting on Designer Matter that we organized June 22nd–June 24th, 2015, at AMOLF, Amsterdam.