In this introductory talk, I place clusters and protoclusters, and their evolution, in the general context of the cosmic web formation. I also give an overview of the technics used to find clusters and their progenitors, and of the coverage of the redshift-mass plane achieved with current samples. I summarize the open questions that can be addressed from local merging cluster observations, statistical studies of the dynamical state of the cluster population, the cluster outskirts and protoclusters.

This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Pro- gramme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement number 340519.