Material Matters II

It’s amazing how smells evoke memories from the past – moments we totally have forgotten about until a similar smell triggers our recollection. The other day I came across a scent that reminded me vividly of the apartment of my great aunt in which I spent much of my childhood - It was a mind boggling sensation. Another fragrance I am attached to is the smell of a particular cleaning detergent which I encountered when I first arrived to the US at the YMCA hostel in New York City. I was so excited about the new impressions that I must have forever recorded this smell with the particular moment.

Smells are thus one of these contingencies that matter enormously in our common spatial experience. There are many such contingencies - health, mood, agenda, company, light etc. but fragrances’ and also sounds have this exceptional power of immediate access to our memory. As far as sounds go, Pavlov’s experiment to conditioning dogs to sounds is a good example for even scientific proof.

At architecture schools it is often talked about how we experience the world with all our senses and yet it is exactly the academic realm that can hardly fulfill its ambitions because it is bound to mere visual judgment. It’s a dilemma that our common design tools, drawings, card board models and renderings, won’t allow us to simulate actual experience or contingencies of our quotidian doing.

So how is it at all possible to work with scents in design? Well, using air fresheners is not a solution because these are artificial. They would be what ornaments are to the visual world – mere decorative embellishments. The same way I prefer to exposed natural materials as opposed to hiding them behind veneered finishes the same way I favor the real smell of materials over artificial flavors – the same so in foods.

Unfortunately the smells are strongest when the materials are fresh - in the making – on the construction site, for instant cutting wood, pouring and drying concrete, welding steel etc. As construction advances and the finishes go up usually the smell of paint dominates everything else – and considering the VOC level – this kind of smell is not even desirable for our health. Then, after completion when air conditioning and ventilation start running these flavors disappear in no time at all. However, if air exchange is mismanaged, underperformed or aged, the smell of occupancy takes over and produces this funny flavor that again will be registered by many people and maybe recorded forever in their memories.

One way to start a discussion may be collecting associations of spatial flavors similar to discussing perfumes or wines.