Archinect - News

Office buildings are deploying the power of scents to lure workers back

2022-09-15T14:29:00-04:00

There’s been a surge of demand from real estate owners for pleasant fragrances to make the air a little fresher and the workplace a little more comforting and energizing [...] “Here in New York City, for example, real estate companies are interested in scenting the building itself, as opposed to just the individual tenant spaces [...] There are lots of vacant office spaces these days. So what can the real estate companies do to attract tenants?”

So-called "scent profiles" have been documented to improve productivity, avoid a phenomenon known as olfactory fatigue, and achieve a psychological familiarity helpful to marketers when developing brand recognition. This is one of many approaches companies are attempting to use in order to lure workers back into the city's emptying central business districts.

Marriott, the nation’s second-largest hotel chain, has for two decades incorporated scents into all 30 of its Bonvoy properties, and (despite the HR headaches caused by allergy risks) there is now a growing interest among heavyweight commercial clients like SHVO and CBRE looking to improve indoor air quality in the wake of the pandemic.

Allison Lobay, global account manager of Air Aroma, shared with the Commercial Observer: "Some scents are associated with improved productivity. In the office, citrus fragrances are used to energize...

Sensory Urbanism: Researchers make the case for fighting 'visual bias in urban planning'

2022-06-14T19:51:00-04:00

The work of Concordia University Centre for Sensory Studies director David Howes and other researchers working in the growing field of sensory urbanism was recently highlighted by Jennifer Hattam of MIT Technology Review.

A wide range of methods ranging from the high-tech and data-driven, to more ethnographic and experience-based ones, are being used as a means to combat the “limiting visual bias” they see as inherent in most urban planning schemes. Hattam writes, "Around the world, researchers like Howes are investigating how nonvisual information defines the character of a city and affects its livability. Using methods ranging from low-tech sound walks and smell maps to data scraping, wearables, and virtual reality, they’re fighting what they see as a limiting visual bias in urban planning."

Previously reported on Archinect: Cooper Hewitt's sensory-focused exhibition, “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision”

Early real-world applications in Berlin, London, Barcelona, and Instanbul have ...

A blind New Yorker identifies the city by scent

2016-05-05T12:26:00-04:00

I’m blind, so my nose tells me what neighborhood I’m in. My dog and I – we walk. We’ll walk from 125th down to Houston. The smell of Harlem is definitely different now. It’s more open. There’s a new class of people. The whole thing feels like someplace else.

To navigate a vast city, people often develop a set of idiosyncratic markers: personal landmarks, favorite coffee joints, or in Craig Taylor's case, the smell of a particular section of town. Should designers start thinking in terms of creating signature scents to help identify their work for a populace that can't "see" projects traditionally?

For all the best in the smells of architecture:

Experimental architecture history exhibits spaces with smell

2013-10-11T15:42:00-04:00

In conjunction with the symposium, "Test Sites: Experiments in the History of Space", the California College of the Arts (CCA) Architecture Division will stage the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the recent works of artisans and historians who harness scents, essences and fragrances in the reconstruction and preservation of historical spaces — An Olfactory Archive.

Probably the most under-appreciated sense in the experiential toolbox (unless you count proprioception), smell is often maligned by aesthetic criticism as too ephemeral, too fleeting, to substantiate anything meaningful. But what if it opened the nostrils and minds of the sniffers to imagine architectural space in a new way, or represent a place's atmosphere as it once was? An Olfactory Archive: 1100 - 1969, presented by the Architecture Division at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, explores the atmosphere of historical spaces through smell, in an exhibition that displays reconstructed scents authored by perfumers, architects and artists (and others) who have all worked with smell in the recent past.

The work is part of Test SItes: Experiments in the History of Space. A selection of the featured scents is as follows:

curator Aaron Betsky + Herzog and deMeuron: "Rotterdam - Olfactory Object" (2004)
perfumer Christophe Laudemiel: the Straight of Bosp...

The scent of an Apple product, sourcing the Macbook Pro fragrance

2012-04-17T12:21:00-04:00

A distinctive scent can be observed when unwrapping a newly purchased Apple product from its packaging. Apple fans will certainly recognize this smell. The scent created for Greatest Hits encompasses the smell of the plastic wrap covering the box, printed ink on the cardboard, the smell of paper and plastic components within the box and of course the aluminum laptop which has come straight from the factory where it was assembled in China.