Living cells are well equipped in exploiting a large number of out of equilibrium processes to support life. A complete understanding of these mechanisms is still in its infancy due to the complexity and number of the individual components involved in the reactions. These reactions are spatially localized within membrane bound or membrane less compartments. 

Creating artificial, cell-like structures which have the features of compartmentalization and the ability to contain reactions is an important route to designing, building and engineering synthetic cellular systems with specific complexity and function. This bottom up approach allows excellent control over the components and represents an interesting alternative to generating cellular models. 

 In this talk I will discuss strategies for the design and synthesis of membrane bound and membrane free compartments such as lipid vesicles, proteinosomes and coacervates and describe how these compartments may be used as platforms for implementing dynamical behaviours including: enzyme catalysis, intercellular communication or autocatalysis.