In this paper we give a simple and uniform presentation of the rewriting calculus, also called Rho Calculus. In addition to its simplicity, this formulation explicitly allows us to encode complex structures such as lists, sets, and objects. We provide extensive examples of the calculus, and we focus on its ability to represent some object oriented calculi, namely the Lambda Calculus of Objects of Fisher, Honsell, and Mitchell, and the Object Calculus of Abadi and Cardelli. Furthermore, the calculus allows us to get object oriented constructions unreachable in other calculi. In summa, we intend to show that because of its matching ability, the Rho Calculus represents a lingua franca to naturally encode many paradigms of computations. This enlightens the capabilities of the rewriting calculus based language ELAN to be used as a logical as well as powerful semantical framework.