Towards self assembled metamaterials How far can we push chemical self assembly This is one of the 25 biggest questions science is facing over the next quarter century as reported by the Science journal in 2005. The idea of self assembly is to fabricate synthetic structures or materials from the bottom up. Up to date a huge class of distinct structures was successfully demonstrated to be fabricated by self assembly. One important scientific area that exerts the ideas of self assembly arose from the fusion of the fields of colloidal nanochemistry and nanooptics. There the focus is on the fabrication of bottom up nanophotonic structures with a tailored optical response. Very interesting are self assembled metamaterials (MMs). They promise to widen the possibilities on how to control the propagation of light to an extraordinary degree. Concerning self assembled MMs the precise spatial arrangement of its unit cells across larger dimensions is not possible in most cases; leading essentially to amorphous structures. Such self assembled MMs require novel analytical means to describe their optical properties and innovative designs of functional elements that possess a desired near and far field response. The first goal of this thesis is the introduction and development of a feasible theoretical description of amorphous MMs. Once the theory is established the second goal is on experimental realizations of self assembled MMs. Therefore the focus of this thesis is on self assembled MMs and the question on how far they can be pushed to obtain artificial materials with an extraordinary optical response.