Since the bronze age man has exploited the inherent compliance of liquids to create objects. This concept has been perfected through the years, and has matured into a myriad of industrial processes that abound in the polymer, glass and food industries. Success however comes at the expense of simplicity as these processes have complex multi-physics components. In contrast with this approach, I propose to explore new paradigms in the design, the engineering, and the manufacturing of structured and functional materials, using free surface gravity driven flows, and harnessing their fluidic instabilities. This method relies on a fundamental and predictive understanding of fluid-mechanics in far-from-equilibrium problems, and leverages on the mathematical scaffolding and geometrical nonlinearities that accompany them.
