Beyond discovery: design for a new material world

For millennia, materials have paced the evolution of technology. Their central importance in the advance of human civilization has been acknowledged in the naming of Ages, from Stone, Bronze and Iron to Silicon. While to the general public the structure of materials remains largely shrouded in medieval alchemical mystery, the specialists knowledge has seen an explosive growth over the past half century in the ability to observe, predict and manipulate multiscale material microstructures over a hierarchy of length scales. As an Age of Discovery draws to a close, a new confluence of natural philosophies has brought an Age of Design in which a rekindling of human creativity offers both new materials and ways of creating them beyond the dreams of the alchemist.