<p>The post-Darwinian era has been marked by a long-term effort to lay the foundations for a generalized theory of evolution in the broad sense. We suggest throughout this article that most of biological systems, including living species, could stand as multiscale complex systems due to microscopic or mesoscopic properties of the entity interacting with its environment. Intriguing commonalties which exist between the living and non-living species as complex systems give a strong hint that a unified approach could be developed. The paper explores this hypothesis by analyzing how complex systems, such as granular matter, evolve and adapt when brought out of equilibrium. The inherent disorder in most of granular materials gives way to a wide spectrum of structural patterns that can transform according to the external conditions applied. When brought out of equilibrium, phase transitions can occur spontaneously, leading to profound configurational reorganizations where new and unexpected structures can emerge. Using most of the fundamentals derived for granular systems, a material approach of evolution is proposed, whereby living and non-living architectures can be brought together within a rational framework whereby key concepts such as self-organization, emergence, scale effects, fluctuations and memory storage are at the very forefront.</p>