Book excerpt: Containing papers from the 2nd High Performance Design of Structures and Materials and the Optimum Design of Structures conference, following the success of a number of meetings since 1989, this book will be of interest to those in any engineering field. The use of novel materials and new structural concepts nowadays is not restricted to highly technical areas like aerospace, aeronautical applications or the automotive industry, but affects all engineering fields including those such as civil engineering and architecture. Most high performance structures require the development of a generation of new higher performance sustainable materials, which can more easily resist a range of external stimuli or react in a non-conventional manner. Emphasis is placed on intelligent structures and materials as well as the application of computational methods for their modelling, control and management. Optimisation problems of interest involve those related to size, shape and topology of structures and materials. Optimisation techniques have much to offer to those involved in the design of new industrial products. The development of new algorithms and the appearance of powerful commercial computer codes with easy to use graphical interfaces have created a fertile field for the incorporation of optimisation into the design process in all engineering disciplines. The book addresses the topic of design optimisation with welcomed contributions on numerical methods, different optimisation techniques and new software. Several of the topics covered are: Composite materials and structures; Material characterisation; Experiments and numerical analysis; Transformable structures; Environmentally friendly and sustainable structures; Evolutionary methods in optimisation; Aerospace structures; Biomechanics application and Pneumatic structures.