Materiality (architecture) is another key selling tool, the choices made must not only be aesthetically pleasing and persuasive but also functional with a minimal need for maintenance.
The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk.
James Corner considers landscape spatiality to be one of the three things that distinguish the medium of landscape (the others are landscape temporality and landscape materiality).
Identity studies by Descartes (I think therefore I am), followed by Freud (id, ego and super ego), Erikson (ego as an identity within a social reality), Goffman (dramaturgical theory), and Foucault (the materiality of technologies of the self) were essential theoretical precursors upon which the discipline of Technoself Studies was built.