“What if we designed for all our senses? Suppose, for a moment, that sound, touch, and odor were treated as the equals of sight, and that emotion was as important as cognition. What would our built environment be like if sensory response, sentiment, and memory were critical design factors, more vital even than structure and program?” – JOY MONICE MALNAR & FRANK VODVARKA
space
“Smells are not decodable. Nor can they be inventoried, for no inventory of them can have either a beginning or an end. They ‘inform’ only about the most fundamental realities, about life and death, and they are pan of no significant dichotomies except perhaps that between life beginning and life ending. There is no pathway here other than the direct one between the receiving centre and the perimeter of its range – no pathway other than the nose and the scent themselves. Somewhere between information and the direct stimulation of a brutal response, the sense of smell had its glory days when animality still predominated over ‘culture’, rationality and education – before these factors, combined with a thoroughly cleansed space, brought about the complete atrophy of smell. One can’t help feeling, though, that to carry around an atrophied organ which still claims its due must be somewhat pathogenic.” – HENRI LEFEVBRE
“Even if you could capture the smells, sounds, tastes, and feel of a place, digitize them, and send them down a wire, you’d still never get near the sensation of ‘being there’. Why? Because we humans are not so dumb. Our minds and our bodies are one intelligence.” – JOHN THACKARA
The 4th Space, Creativity & Organizing Workshop was devoted to the senses – in particular to the sense of smell.
“Americans and Arabs live in different sensory worlds much of the time and do not use the same senses even to establish most of the distances maintained during conversations.” – EDWARD HALL
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” – HELEN KELLER
An interesting lecture series on the smell of architecture is scheduled for Basel including a contribution by Andreas Wilhelm.
Carlos Ramírez-Pantanella is a Spanish architect and artist who has recently produced Madrid MDCXXXV (1635), an olfactory installation at Lope de Vega’s Home-Museum in Madrid. The installation attempts to reconstruct the olfactory atmosphere of Spanish Golden Century.
Researchers find that humans can navigate through smell alone—so why are we so dependent on screens?
Human interaction includes contact with the bacterial universe of another person ejected into the air:
On the 19th of September, Claus Noppeney and Ashraf Osman of SCI conducted a class for the Signaletik CAS program (context building), part of the Signaletik MAS (Environmental Information Design) at the Bern University of the Arts, under the supervision of Jimmy Schmid.