Morphological changes, from tissue remodelling to cell division, are supported by a tight interplay between mechanical and biochemical machinery. Mechanotransduction integrates all of the biochemical processes that allow the sustained adaptation of cells to the mechanical stimuli in their environment. This process generates intra- and extracellular forces through three major components: adhesion sites, the acto-myosin cytoskeleton and the signalling molecules that regulate the coordination of the mechanotransduction processes. While these mechanisms are highly dynamic, optogenetics appears to be the technology of choice for the development of new paradigms to explain the spatial and temporal coordination between the different players in mechanotransduction. Light-controlled mechanotransduction components open up new avenues towards understanding the functional links between these components across a range of scales, from molecular dynamics to tissue-level remodelling processes.