Over the last decades plenty of new materials habe been developed mainly for aerospace applications. Amongst them mainly fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) made their way into the building industry and today some pilot projects can be found all around the world.

Besides their basic idea to carry loads a new type of materials has evolved:
These smart materials are designed to provide additional performance- enhancing functions which ca be of a multi-functional nature. They allow for example monitoring of the structure itself as well as self-healing capacities as the other far end.