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Smell Walks

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Experiential Walks for Urban Design

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Civil Engineering ((SPRTRCIENG))

Abstract

This work aims to report the specific interest of experiential walks for smell perception in environmental analyses, using a review of different methods and field actions. The first part of the chapter reviews the main difficulties when one wants to comprehend environmental olfactory phenomenon, emphasizing the importance of semantic considerations and the role of the context accounts (from in vitro to in-situ, including in vivo approaches). By the way, field studies on the topic are scarce, especially if compared to the in vitro experiments profusion. If in vitro approaches allow parameters controls and statistical analysis, they struggle to covert identified ordinary life smell phenomenon. However, expectations and implicit memories are critical in everyday smell experiences. Even in vivo approaches, such as store reconstitutions, often fail to appreciate the magnitude of contexts in olfactory interpretations, especially situational ones. The second part of the chapter therefore, considers the main assets of experiential walks for smell: an in-situ posture implying confrontation of heterogenic data and an in motion specificity. The first one may permit to go a little farer then the simple sources inventory often use in environmental smell analyses. The second one allows renew sensations for a sense for which habituation, that is the rapid and specific olfactory acclimatization when exposed to an odor, is a particulary important feature of everyday smell experiences and movements. The advantages and drawbacks of smell walks are then discussed, to clear some recommendations for smell walks applications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “The neighborhood of a marshy place must be avoided; for in such a site the morning air, uniting with the fogs that rise in the neighborhood, will reach the city with the rising sun; and these fogs and mists, charged with the exhalation of the fenny animals, will diffuse an unwholesome effluvium over the bodies of the inhabitants, and render the place pestilent.” Vitruvius, De Architectura, book I, Chap. 4.

  2. 2.

    “It is suggested that episodic information is an essential constituent of olfactory memory and that its function is comparable to that of form and structure in visual and auditory memory systems” [36]. See also [37, 38].

  3. 3.

    Schifferstein and his colleagues refer to body odor as a new issue in the nightclubs smell atmospheres as a result of the widespread ban on smoking in these clubs.

  4. 4.

    The authors do not give much information on the odorant compounds bouquets implemented, it is likely that they are not extracts, but rather imitations or evocations: “The three scents that were used for the experiments were orange (no. 102), seawater fresh and salty (no. 306), and peppermint (no. 007) provided by RetroScent, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.” [33: 57].

  5. 5.

    Le Corbusier developed between 1926 and 1933 the concepts of “respiration exacte” and “mur neutralisant” to achieve an internal air conditioning in buildings [41].

  6. 6.

    Henshaw [14] reports several episodes of odorous spreads (natural or man-made) over large distances, of the order of several tens or even hundreds of kilometers, for example from central Europe to the south of England.

  7. 7.

    For perfumers, the scent of a perfume consists of “head”, “heart” and “background” notes, corresponding to the order of smelling of its various constituents [45, 46].

  8. 8.

    “Natural odors” 82%, “food odors” 75%, “exhaust fumes and industrial smells” 63% and “smells produced by organic waste” 59% [56: 224].

  9. 9.

    Water in the city is rarely fragrant, let alone when it is moving. In the same way, traditional plantings in the city are traditionally (in nowadays) unscented.

  10. 10.

    For example, indoors, 5% only of the compounds considered as pollutants (i.e. dangerous for human health) are odorous [77].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AAU Ambiances, Architecture, Urbanités - Unité Mixte de Recherche 1563 CNRS, École Nationale Supérieure d’ Architecture de Paris La Villette, Paris, France

    Suzel Balez

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  1. Suzel Balez
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning (DASTU), Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Barbara E. A. Piga

  2. Graduate School of Architecture, UMR CNRS AAU, Nantes, France

    Daniel Siret

  3. CNRS—French National Centre for Scientific Research, UMR CNRS AAU, Grenoble, France

    Jean-Paul Thibaud

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Balez, S. (2021). Smell Walks. In: Piga, B.E.A., Siret, D., Thibaud, JP. (eds) Experiential Walks for Urban Design. Springer Tracts in Civil Engineering . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76694-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76694-8_6

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