Metal-organic frameworks, along with other reticular materials, benefit from the almost endless choice of building blocks that can be used for their assembly.
Such unmatched structural and topological diversity grant these materials a range of properties and potential field of application rarely reached before. 

Conveniently, discovering novel materials can be achieved relatively simply by mixing reagents and common sense.
However, one key to designing innovative, fine tunable porous platforms yielding materials with exceptional properties, is to implement rational design approaches.

From the intuitive -yet powerful- molecular building blocks approach to the art of merging several nets into one, through the understanding of the principles of geometry mismatch/rematch and the cantellation strategy, this contribution will shed lights on the importance of the topology tool, the use of highly connected building units, and finally introduce the concept of face transitive nets to further achieve made-to-order separation agents.