During the engineering design activities of the ITER project, beryllium has been selected as the armour material for the first wall of the primary, baffle and limiter blanket modules. These components have different requirements according to their function, so the armour design and its joining technology have been developed in order to withstand different operating and loading conditions. Extensive R&D has been performed to develop, select and characterise the beryllium material and the joining techniques. In parallel, beryllium plasma spray coating has been developed, as an alternative manufacturing process or as a possible repair method for locally damaged areas. For the reduced technical objectives / reduced cost (RTO/RC) ITER project, it is proposed to maintain Be as the reference armour material and to optimise the manufacturing technologies in order to minimise costs. The paper presents the rationale of the design choices for the application of beryllium to the blanket first wall and gives an overview of the R&D performed and the results achieved.