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Abstract Art and materials innovation have always been intertwined, dating back to the earliest human creations. In modern times, however, the increasing specialization of materials science often restricts artists' access to cutting‐edge materials. Here, the materials science aspects of an art‐science collaboration between artist Kimsooja and the Wiesner Lab at Cornell University, are detailed. The project involves the development of a custom‐made iridescent block copolymer coating by means of self‐assembly, originally applied to transparent window panels of a façade for the ≈14 m tall art installation:A Needle Woman: Galaxy Is a Memory, Earth is a Souvenirby artist Kimsooja. After several exhibitions in the US and Europe, the installation is now part of the permanent museum collection at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, UK. Full characterization of the solution blade‐cast coatings show shear aligned, standing up lamellar morphologies that behave as volume‐phase gratings with periodicities between 300 and 400 nm. Coatings are also applied to foldable (origami) paper and converted into iridescent porous ceramic materials. It is hoped this work inspires and informs communities across materials science, the arts, and architecture. 

Porous polymer-derived membranes are useful for applications ranging from filtration and separation technologies to energy storage and conversion. Combining block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly with the industrially scalable, non-equilibrium phase inversion technique (SNIPS) yields membranes comprising periodically ordered top surface structures supported by asymmetric, hierarchical substructures that together overcome performance tradeoffs typically faced by materials derived from equilibrium approaches. This review first reports on recent advances in understanding the top surface structural evolution of a model SNIPS-derived system during standard membrane formation. Subsequently, the application of SNIPS to multicomponent systems is described, enabling pore size modulation, chemical modification, and transformation to non-polymeric materials classes without compromising the structural features that define SNIPS membranes. Perspectives on future directions of both single-component and multicomponent membrane materials are provided. This points to a rich and fertile ground for the study of fundamental as well as applied problems using non-equilibrium-derived asymmetric porous materials with tunable chemistry, composition, and structure. 

This work elucidates a route to mesoporous magnetic materials with co-continuous morphologies from block copolymer self-assembly. The co-continuous structure impacts the magnetic behavior compared to non-structured chemically-identical materials.