Artifacts are human-made objects that people use to signify their cultural affiliations. These objects take many different forms—clothes, tools, decorations, symbols, etc.—but they are all used as a way to exercise the beliefs that people hold and their ideologies about the world.

Moreover, to imaginations lacerated by the horrors of World War I, the ideal of glass architecture had a special meaning: a world remade of glass would have evolved beyond throwing stones – or artillery shells. Glass architecture was pacifist architecture, the very image of exalted vulnerability which, given a new social contract, would remain