Introduction

While this proceedings volume deals primarily with the conventional areas of metal, ceramic, and polymer composites for civil construction, several of the papers report on new developments in the emerging fields of wood and nanocomposites. The 63 papers from the September 2002 workshop includes the further integration of the fabrication and function processes, aspects of the scale of components which improve the competitive position of composites relative to conventional materials and the exploitation of new types of composite such as nanocomposites which exploit a variety of new length scales to achieve their functionality. This also gives rise to multifunctional composites which have attributes other than structural properties. In this talk these aspects of the future of composites will be explored and illustrated.