Designing with Smell

Practices, Techniques and Challenges

Victoria Henshaw, Kate McLean, Dominic Medway, Chris Perkins, Gary Warnaby, Victoria Henshaw, Kate McLean, Dominic Medway, Chris Perkins, Gary Warnaby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138955547
• eBook ISBN: 9781317354611
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Designing with Smell aims to inspire readers to actively consider smell in their work through the inclusion of case studies from around the world, highlighting the current use of smell in different cutting-edge design and artistic practices. This book provides practical guidance regarding different equipment, techniques, stages and challenges which might be encountered as part of this process.

Throughout the text there is an emphasis on spatial design in numerous forms and interpretations – in the street, the studio, the theatre or exhibition space, as well as the representation of spatial relationships with smell. Contributions, originate across different geographical areas, academic disciplines and professions. This is crucial reading for students, academics and practitioners working in olfactory design.

1
Introduction

Kate McLean, Dominic Medway, Chris Perkins and Gary Warnaby

The Smell of the Mountains

In January 2013, Victoria Henshaw chose the city of Grenoble, in the foothills of the Alps, as her temporary home to transform her PhD thesis into her first book, Urban Smellscapes. Victoria loved the smell of mountains in the winter (most especially when she was at the top of a snow-capped peak with a snowboard attached to her feet), where meteorology, geology and geography combine to form an olfactory purity and clarity devoid of any lingering sweetness or residual pungency. The scent of cold mountains is paradoxically both full and empty, reassuring as an olfactory entity of its own, but equally adept as a neutral container co-existing with the more transitory whiffs of foliage, humanity and vernacular activities. The smell of the mountains has a similar presence to the mountains themselves, a background odor anchored in space and permanent in time, a dependable and reliable, self-assured scent. Urban Smellscapes emerged in this montane environment, as a masterly text depicting the background to the urban olfactory world from a humanist perspective. Urban smellscapes around the world are subject to odor monitoring and environmental control, and the book showed how people living in or visiting these spaces might reclaim some agency in the determination of the smellscape. As a text it served as an inspiration for future involvement in decision-making, and will certainly change the design of the cities of our future. Victoria proposed employing a pragmatic philosophy to effect this transition from theory to practice:

The design of urban smellscapes must therefore acknowledge and allow for difference, both in recognising that odours will be perceived differently by different people, and in thinking about the variety of odours that may be detected in a city or neighbourhood.

Henshaw, 2014, p. 204

These ‘background’ smells are arguably analogous to base notes in a scent; they form the structure to which the lighter episodic smells attach themselves prior to volatilization. Urban Smellscapes can be read as the ‘background’ text to the book we are now introducing, which builds on the theoretical background to highlight the practical, episodic and case based olfactory practice, and also extends the range beyond the urban focus of its predecessor. Designing with Smell as an edited collection was conceived by Victoria as a practical ‘hands-on’ guide and a natural successor to the call in Urban Smellscapes to design “more humanistic places for the future” (Henshaw, 2014, p. 224). Pulling together professionals, practitioners and academics from a variety of countries and disciplines highlights Victoria’s unique ability to connect with those working in this field, and is testament to the respect in which she is held across many disciplines and also beyond the academy from practitioners and artists and across different language communities.

The call for contributions for Designing with Smell went out in early 2014, and several of the authors featured in this collection swiftly submitted their abstracts. Tragically, just six months later, Victoria discovered she was terminally ill and suggested that we, the Smell and the City team who formed as a group in 2012, might continue her work in ensuring that students and professionals interested in the practicalities of designing with smell had a body of experience, guidance and reference to inspire and lead them. We took the project on, and where necessary adapted Victoria’s plans in the light of changing submissions and activities in the field, but the practical ethos remains. So does the trans-disciplinary and multi-national nature of the proposal, with chapters from disciplines as diverse as human geography, management science, art and design, history, psychology and landscape architecture and with case evidence from the Americas, Europe and Asia. There is clearly scope for more work from the global South and Australasia. You can also explore the very different perspectives that emerge from consultants to the perfume industry, and practitioners focusing on branding and environmental monitoring, as against chapters from artists discussing their practice, or educators exploring how smell practice might be learnt. These practical observations are set against more academic chapters, and Designing with Smell offers much more than an academic take on its central themes. Three years after Victoria’s early drafts of the proposal, the project has come to fruition.

The Themes

The 25 central chapters of Designing with Smell (which exclude this Introduction and the Afterword) are organized into seven parts, each with an introduction reflecting on the ideas presented by the part authors. This thematic organization offers one cut into a diverse field.

Part 1 highlights the significance of olfactory art, with contributions discussing practice in contexts across Europe and North America. These chapters bring together a concern with multimodal artistic encounters focusing on artistic interventions highlighting often contentious aesthetic olfactory installations. This aesthetic challenges the dominance of perfumed and pleasant smells: sewers and sweat are frequently foregrounded, and the olfactory art described here also focuses on the relations of smell to the places it evokes and the spaces in which it is exhibited. This art frequently escapes from the confines of the gallery to work as part of an educational encounter in a school (Melissa Westbrook, Chapter 4), or in a skittle ally of a pub (Victoria J.E. Jones, Chapter 2), or as theatrical performances (Gwenn-Aël Lynn, Chapter 3).

Such artistic endeavor often strongly depends upon a means of translating smell into another medium, in order to represent aspects of the olfactory experience in ways that might be communicated. Part II highlights different aspects of this representational practice, with contributions from diverse fields and backgrounds. The cartographic challenges faced by Kate McLean in her smell mapping (Chapter 7) are set against storytelling amongst First Nation communities of North America explored by Julia Feuer-Cotter (Chapter 6). These in turn are juxtaposed to Miriam Songster’s artistic practice relating taste, smell and eating practices in an exhibit in various North American cities (Chapter 5). Stories of the Arctic are brought home to English cities; the experiential smellscape of Singapore is set against a different cartographic imaginary reflecting the canals of Amsterdam, and the global is rendered into taste and smells for New York participants in the GhostFood project.

Part III focuses much more explicitly on the worlds of urban design that were central to Victoria’s first book. Here, the focus is on the practicalities of design and monitoring, and the chapters present evidence from the UK, Korea, the Netherlands, Greece and China. Landscape architects play an important role in these design processes, and Chapter 9 from Victoria L. Lygum highlights how the natural world might be enrolled to enhance wellbeing, but also to enrich our urban experiences. A more regulatory and scientific approach is central in Michael Bull’s exploration of the monitoring of smellscapes (Chapter 11). Planting in cities offers great potential and Jieling Xiao, Malcolm Tait and Jian Kang focus on best practice in the design of natural elements of our urban fabric (Chapter 8). By way of contrast, a cultural experience can also be enhanced through intervention in the smellscape, evidenced in EunSook Kwon’s focus (Chapter 10).

Smell is also increasingly important for those interested in the branding and design of retail and service environments in the city. This commercial theme is explored in Part IV with chapters illustrating global variations in practice, but also contrasting academic with practitioner views of the field. Prask Sutton explores best practice in outdoor advertising (Chapter 13), whilst Claire Sokell Thompson focuses upon how smells might best be enrolled into the development of brands (Chapter 14). These two practical chapters are set against much more academic treatment of smell in organizational environments from Samantha Warren and Kathleen Riach (Chapter 15), and a review of the wider context of designing smell into the consumer experience provided by Dominic Medway and Gary Warnaby (Chapter 12).

Part V focuses on pedagogic contexts for smell. Disciplinary practices are contrasted, from Victoria Henshaw’s focus on architecture and planning (Chapter 16), to the emphasis on art and design practice documented by Ashraf Osman, Claus Noppeney and Nada Endrissat (Chapter 17), through to design fashion and art presented by Joanna Norman and Nicola Pozzani (Chapter 18) and Melanie McBride and Jason Nolan’s focus on situated learning in the design professions (Chapter 19). The European and North American practices described here highlight how more than vision is crucial in the education and training for professionals acquiring skills in the management of the built environment. Together these chapters also demonstrate that research alone is insufficient: it needs to be disseminated and enacted in and through participatory curricular structures.

The four chapters in Part VI focus on changes in the deployment of smell, with an emphasis on historical practice and upon the role of smell in the theatrical professions. On the one hand the smells of the past can be unearthed: either by archaeologists such as Stuart Eve, in Chapter 21 about the smellscape of the battle of Waterloo, or by historians of art, as in Caro Verbeek’s consideration of avant-garde and futurist encounters with smell (Chapter 20). On the other hand, the final two chapters in this part highlight the more performative potential of smell by exploring theatrical contexts. Michael and Charles McGinley emphasize the practical issues involved in olfactory staging (Chapter 22), whilst Anna D’Errico charts perceptions of smell in different cases of multi-sensorial performances (Chapter 23).

The three chapters in Part VII each focus on different aspects of making odors, bringing the book back to a key theme underpinning many chapters. The artists, designers and academics writing in this part highlight the role of technologies in this process, but also reflect on the conceptual implications of creating smells. Olivia Alice Clemence starts with a consideration of DIY-based approaches to smell distillation (Chapter 24). Brian Goeltzenleuchter shifts focus to the frequently antiseptic art museum and explores the technological possibilities of making smell-based exhibits in these kinds of contexts (Chapter 25). Debra Riley Parr emphasizes the digital possibilities of making smells in her exploration of recent changes in practice (Chapter 26).

We conclude with Jim Drobnick’s thoughtful words. Drobnick highlights three aspects of the different contributions to our anthology: their protean focus on diverse contexts; the need for critical thinking about smell which they together evoke; and the frequent recognition that the intersection of smell and design demands a consideration of the ethical implications of intervening in the smellscape. He ends with a recognition of the spectacular growth in research and literature in this field, highlighting the incredible diversity of olfactory research, but also its dynamism, versatility and performativity.

Moving on from the Mountains …

So this collection of articles and papers deals with “smells, of scents, perfumes, odours, whiffs and niffs; of aromas, bouquets and fragrances; and also … of effluvia, reeks, foetors, stenches, and –stinks” (McKenzie, 1923, p. 1). It is Victoria Henshaw’s second and final book. It serves as a tribute to an inspiring voice, and a celebration of her wonderful capacity to make things happen. We urge you to read these contributions and think about the richly diverse ways in which they enable Victoria’s vision for a human-centered re-imaging of our smellscapes!

References

Henshaw, V. (2014). Urban smellscapes: Understanding and designing city smell environments. London: Routledge.

McKenzie, D. (1923). Aromatics and the soul: A study of smells. London: Heinemann.

Part I
Olfactory Art

Introduction

David Howes

“To what organic sense do we owe the least and which seems to be the most dispensable?” the 18th-Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1978) asked:

The sense of smell. It does not pay us to cultivate it or to refine it in order to gain enjoyment; this sense can pick up more objects of aversion than of pleasure (especially in crowded places) and, besides, the pleasure coming from the sense of smell cannot be other than fleeting and transitory.

p. 46

Kant’s disqualification of smell, not only as an aesthetic sense but also as a cognitive sense, cast a long shadow. It is echoed, for example, in the art psychologist Rudolf Arnheim’s assertion in Visual Thinking (1969, p. 19) that: “one can indulge in smells and tastes, but one can hardly think in them.” This is in contrast to the senses of sight and hearing, the aesthetic and cognitive or ‘intellectual’ vocation of which has always been treated as given in the Western tradition. The curious thing is that smell was also seen as an intellectual sense in premodernity. For example, ‘nose-wise’ (now obsolete) could mean either ‘clever’ or ‘keen-scented,’ and the words ‘sagacious’ and ‘sage’ derive from Latin words meaning ‘to have a good sense of smell’ (Classen, 1993, pp. 36–60). Moreover, on account of its identification with the breath (Latin spiritus), smell was widely unders...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Olfactory Art
• PART II Representing Smell
• PART III Smellscape Design and Monitoring
• PART IV Retail, Scent and Service Design
• PART V Smell Learning Environments
• PART VI Historic and Theatrical Smellscapes
• PART VII Smell Capture, Distillation and Diffusion
• Afterword
• Index