At the nanoscale, spatial dispersion becomes a design tool. I will show how artificially engineered, essentially Hermitian metamaterials with strong non-local response enable deterministic control of light–matter interaction. By driving topological transitions in their dispersion—from elliptic to hyperbolic and into the epsilon-near-zero limit where the refractive index approaches zero—we can manipulate visible-range plasmons and polaritons, flatten optical phase, and access slow-light and energy-squeezing regimes. These optical extremes magnify field confinement and radiation pressure, opening a route to optomechanical phenomena that act as a classical electromagnetic analogue of the Meissner effect, including Meissner-like expulsion of displacement fields and electric-levitation behavior. I will discuss the underlying physics, practical design rules rooted in non-locality, and recent experiments from our lab that translate these concepts into robust platforms for photonics and sensing.