Natural hybrid materials often possess complex, hierarchical architectures at sizes ranging from a few nanometers to several micro- to millimeters. Their collective properties are determined by the combination of both the structure and composition on each length scale. Hierarchical architectures of organic-inorganic hybrid materials are explicitly generated at different scales and with varying degrees of complexity by self-assembly of the soft source materials. Inspired by Nature, this concept can provide a simple, flexible and economical approach to fabricate multifunctional nanostructures for technological applications via self-assembly of functional hybrid materials. However, understanding the fundamental principles of self-assembled soft matter systems and applying this approach to a variety of combinations of organic-inorganic materials is a major challenge in current materials science and engineering.