But objects speak in many ways, beyond strictly physiological. Our response to material things is complex, beyond just the object's size, shape, and color.

Many objects actually reference or represent something beyond the object itself. Until the advent of modern abstract art, virtually all paintings and sculpture referred to ideas beyond the medium of canvas or stone. A medieval cathedral contains within, and on its walls and spaces, a text that attempts to explain man's role in the church and the world to its users, the majority of whom were illiterate. The Lawn at the University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson, was meant to catalogue the orders of classical architecture that Jefferson believed to be useful for building a new republic. Automobiles built by Detroit in the 1950's, with large tailfins, allude to the romance of speed, aviation, and space travel, and have little to do with picking up the kids from school. All of these examples are objects in, and of, themselves, but they simultaneously refer to ideas beyond the object. The viewer's emotional response is triggered by both the object and its intended reference, which is embedded in the object by its creator.

Many craft objects may not represent or refer to something else, but the human response to the object can also be moved by the understanding of its making. Handmade pottery, baskets, and woodcarvings all can be appreciated as objects, but quite often the knowledge and romance of the craft, of the making of the object itself, becomes intertwined with the artifact. You buy the pottery as much for the potter and the wheel as for the vessel or object itself.

Objects may also contain within their making a moral aspect. Environmentally conscious, "green" products and sustainable "green" architecture embody within them an ethos about how, as humans, we should responsibly use the earth's resources. Renewable raw materials, the energy to manufacture the object, and the act of making the object, are major ideas of the object, beyond its final function, size, shape, or color.

Representational art, architecture, design, and crafted objects clearly do inspire or move the viewer, and contain within the object both its own idea, and ideas and associations beyond itself. But what about objects which are self- referential? By this I mean that the creator is not attempting to associate the object with something else. Utility objects, and modern art and design, offer us examples where the response is more closely correlated to the object, and has fewer references and associations with other things.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, in Oak Park, Illinois, is a relatively small, cast-in-place concrete structure devoid of all customary, ecclesiastical forms. Wright's "Jewel Box," as he referred to it, seats approximately four hundred people, all of whom share an intimate relationship to the pulpit. Wright said that, "the reality of the building did not consist in the walls and in the roof, but in this space within to be lived in." In his documentary film on Frank Lloyd Wright, Ken Burns called Unity Temple, "the biggest space in America." The three hundred and fifty member congregation hosts over 20,000 visitors annually, half of which come from outside the United States.3

The turquoise and translucent white iMac, by the Apple computer company, introduced in 1998, changed Apple's flagging brand, and spawned an entire generation of translucent appliances, devices, and consumer products. Jonathan Ive, one of the designers behind the iMac, spoke of the idea behind the design. "We didn't feel like we had to make this look like a powerful computer. Consumer products are not about terrifying people. The iMac is very human, simple. Somehow you feel comfortable
with it."4

The new Beetle changed Volkswagen's image, and led to the company's revival. The enthusiastic reception even came as a shock even to its German executives. Not surprisingly, the designers looked to the original 1937 Ferdinand Porsche design, commissioned by Adolph Hitler, for inspiration. Freeman Thomas, of the new Beetle's California design team, explains their idea: "We looked at the original Beetle and broke it down into geometric forms.... That was the starting point, from the side its three arches, two fenders, and the cabin, then the front and rear create a smile with a negative arch." The playful attitude is completed with a dashboard- mounted bud vase. Volkswagen's CEO, Ferdinand Piëch, distinguishes the new Beetle as an 'emotional' model, different from the company's other 'rational' models.5