The articles and highlights presented at the second CrystEngComm meeting, held in Nottingham in September 2004 are reviewed. The discussion has highlighted the current development of crystal engineering and allowed to emerge some of its future potentials. In particular, the papers described in this highlight focus on four fundamental aspects: (i) intermolecular interactions: evaluation and application to crystal design; (ii) networks: design and applications; (iii) approaches to crystal synthesis; (iv) polymorphism, solvates and chiral crystal resolution.