CAN WE IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT MATERIALS?Materials have accompanied mankind along its long historical journey through time since the dawn of the Palaeolithic. The relationship has been fusional as materials have been used to make and help make homes, clothes, pots and pans, tools, machines, weapons, all the artefacts that distinguish human beings from animals. The connection with the environment has just been equally fusional as materials have been extracted out of natural resources – raw materials and energy, and have helped shape the landscape, the countries and the cities for mankind to live in. This bond between materials and society will continue for a long time. Materials will continue to be ubiquitous. Material can even be found in the word dematerialization, a concept that questions the role that materials will play in society in the future. By materials, we mean all the materials which have become part of human life as History rolled on: lithic materials, biomaterials and especially wood, metals, from gold to silver and bronze to iron as well as more modern materials, i.e. the materials of today, born from the meeting of mankind’s arts and crafts with its scientific view of the world: ferrous and non-ferrous metals, including steel, zinc, aluminium, copper, lead and tin, cement and concrete, plastics and composites, etc. The list covers most structural materials, but it can probably be argued that all materials should be included, as modern artefacts are a mixture of materials and functions at various levels of scale and complexity, for example in nano- and intelligent materials.