The wide impact and topicality of MOFs arises from the ability to adapt their design to modify structure and function through choice of the component building blocks. By combination of reticular chemistry and building block adaptation, MOFs have been developed for myriad applications. An interesting direction of research is the development of MOFs that comprise components that are either electronically or optically active which can lead to materials with intriguing properties, including conductivity and fluorescence, which can in turn facilitate applications that use materials that change colour upon an external stimulus, such as sensing or electrochromic materials.