Smells are everywhere around us. They are within ourselves and around us, they impact us in our mother’s womb and throughout our entire lives, until death. But while sight and touch prevail in the contemporary approach of design and architecture, the olfactive dimension of our built environment is often forgotten.
This thesis aims at exploring the interactions between the space outside of the body and the body itself, studying how smells matter from the scale of the molecule to the urban planning. What are the potentials of this somewhat neglected sense and how could it be used by designers and architects? How do smells affect architecture and the humans inhabiting it?
During the research, we focused on both a theoretical and an experimental approach, studying the alterations of materials, construction techniques, spaces but also bodies and minds. The research was conducted through different experimentations that helped the -exhaustive- understanding of the affects of smells on architecture. Interviews with different professionals in the landscaping, research or perfumery fields, such as perfumer Fredrik Dalman (from Maison Mona Di Orio), and the analysis of theories of affects with the texts of Deleuze and Guattari, Malgrave, Massumi, Grosz and others lead to the study of the affects of smells on humans.