have been rendered possible by the new facilities provided by the Rubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope. Observational constraints on the evolution and formation of galaxies and large-scale structures as well as the cosmic chemical evolution were criti­ cally discussed with regard to theory and numerical simulations. In this context, the VLT first generation instrument capabilities were presented comprehensively and their use as cosmological tools discussed . The concluding remarks of the workshop focussed on the analysis of var­ ious possibilities for the VLT second generation instrumentation. Many of these topics were covered by invited reviews and talks, as well as some contributed talks. They are included in this volume together with the poster papers.