Morphing skin is an ultimate challenge for the adaptive structures implementation, particularly in the aeronautics sector and, more in general, in all the sectors dealing with the aerodynamics, including maritime means, either connected to transport or not, as for instance the case of energy production. Shape adaptation is essential to guarantee a broader operational envelop, depending on the external conditions. Since aerodynamics (and fluid-dynamics) is governed by geometry, having the control on that aspect may ensure levels of performance, inaccessible otherwise. Even though, the kinematic or compliant systems dedicated to attain the desired variations have the intrinsic showstopper to exhibit point deformations far from guaranteeing a smooth surface in the transformation, whose regularity is the key for high-level operations. The skin, or the exterior covering, plays therefore a fundamental role. This is clearly shown in the nature, where the feathers system hides the skeleton irregularity and provides an even and adjustable surface. In the practical case of a mechanical system, implementing a skin far from the birds complexity, such a structural coating shall have particular and contrasting properties: it should provide minimal resistance in the in-plane motion, to avoid an overload on the actuators, present a zero-Poisson module, to avoid that necessary large longitudinal strain fields translate into severe normal tensions, ensure adequate fatigue-life resistance while being exposed to several unit of percentage strains, and secure an incompressible behaviour with respect to forces that act in the vertical directions for the desired shape preservation. Such characteristics are hard to be obtained for classical and composite materials, in spite of alternative geometries have been proposed, as well as metamaterials have been tried. The perspective of implementing the potentiality of additive manufacturing technologies for constructing micro-architectures may pave the way to the solution of a problem that is one of the main obstacles to the diffusion of adaptive structures in the aerospace and other engineering areas. This invited session welcomes contributions coming from the additive world that approaches the release of high-performance skins, in the wider possible sense, and also from the adaptive structures sector, in order to provide the correct specifications to the scientists that want to challenge this peculiar and fascinating problem.