Olfaction (Smell in Architecture)

Definition

Olfaction names smell as a sensory dimension of architecture and space — in Jim Drobnick's formulation, "the aromatic dimension of buildings… for the most part neglected in architectural theory," whose "volatile effects created by odoriferous materials, ventilated scents, and other wafting perceptions can significantly influence one's experience of a structure" (p. 89). Drobnick's move is a deliberate inversion of Walter Pater's: Pater used "volatile effects" to dismiss architecture from the aesthetic realm (its spiritualities only "lurk about architectural form… felt rather than seen," gathered "by reflection"); Drobnick appropriates and rehabilitates the "lurking sensations, 'vague hints' and 'volatile effects'" as "precisely the terms that can be employed to describe an olfactory approach to architecture" — where the effects are no longer metaphorical but "literally fragrant, pungent, or reeking" (p. 89). Volatile architecture is thus not to be confused with viral architecture (Essen's social-media term): volatile here is literal — evaporating, wafting, breathed — architecture experienced through the air it conditions rather than the image it projects.

The concept sits beside the wiki's haptic/embodied critique of ocularcentrism (embodiment, perception) as its olfactory sibling: the same countering of "the primacy of the visual," with smell additionally valued as "a signifier in excess of language, one that is unexpected, unhyped" (p. 94) — the presentational mode of information against the representational, in Drobnick's framing of the West's "long history" of "distrust of the sensual" (p. 93). Its two institution-scale conditions are heterosmia (the postmodern museum's mixed smell-field) and aromatopia (the engineered five-senses totality).

Key Thinkers

Jim Drobnick — the concept's theorist: the rehabilitation of Pater's volatile effects; heterosmia and aromatopia; editor of The Smell Culture Reader (2006).
Walter Pater — the involuntary origin: his dismissal of architecture ("volatile effects… felt rather than seen") supplies the concept's founding phrase, inverted (not yet paged — see log; cf. the other Pater in this wiki, aesthetic-body).
Gernot Böhme / Peter Sloterdijk (via Borch) — the atmospheric-politics frame in which olfactory design operates as "sensory power": "a pleasant odor elevates the mood of patrons, improves a store's image, enriches the evaluations of products, increases the time consumers spend in a store" (Drobnick, "Eating Nothing," quoted in Borch) — see atmosphere.
Juhani Pallasmaa — the haptic critique of ocularcentrism of which the olfactory critique is the neighbouring sense-register (contrast, not source).
(Discussed in the source, not yet paged — see log: Constance Classen, David Howes & Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994) — smell as a postmodern sense; Sissel Tolaas, scent artist of Smellscape Central Park Autumn 2015 (2015/2016, via Brown); Andreas Keller, "The Scented Museum" (2014, via Brown) — the positioning and association problems of olfactory curation.)

Atmosphere — smell as atmosphere's most neglected register: the volatile effects "wafting" through space; Bell's "museum atmosphere" as asphyxiating ambience.
Heterosmia — Drobnick's term for the postmodern museum's condition: a preponderance of smells from disparate sources, against the conventional museum's anosmia.
Aromatopia — the engineered five-senses totality; smell as saturation and otherness-production.
White Cube — the anti-olfactory paradigm: "pollution-free pristine state" relegating architecture "to a purely visual state."
Embodiment — the bodily claim: smell engages visitors "on a physiological and psychological level"; odor that "invades visitors' bodies and… cements concept to experience."
Heterotopia — aromatopias as heterotopia's olfactory kin: "sites of polyvalency where orthodox behaviours are shed."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

Volatile Architectures (Drobnick 2002/2006) — the concept's founding text: the Pater inversion; the neglected aromatic dimension; heterosmia, aromatopia, authenticity effects and strategic scent; the ocularcentrism counter-critique; the Holocaust Museum's Shoe Exhibit as olfactory realism at the limit.
Architectural Atmospheres (Borch ed. 2006) — the olfactory register of atmospheric power, quoting Drobnick's own "Eating Nothing" essay (The Smell Culture Reader, 2006, p. 346): odour design as "a subtle form of power" operating on a non-conscious level (see atmosphere).
Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — smell named as an architectural design medium: Bienvenidos al Sur's plant-thicket boundary "modulates moisture, light, air, smell, and sound" — smell listed among the media a "diffused boundary" conditions, and the pavilion's aim to "embrace nature in design for all the senses" places olfaction inside the biophilic programme. Where Drobnick's smell arrives as event and saturation, the grotto register treats it as a conditioned ambient — the air's cargo managed by a porous boundary rather than an exhibit. See aromatopia, ambient-conditioning.
Touch, Taste, Smell (Brown 2018) — the concept's museum-exhibit register, with three cases that extend the Drobnick lineage: Tolaas's Smellscape Central Park Autumn 2015 (Cooper Hewitt, 2016) — wall paint infused with sampled "smell molecules," released by friction to "arouse memories, recreate place, capture seasonality, and stir emotional and intellectual responses" (see smellscape); Keller's curation problem — "smells are more difficult to stably position in space than visual objects," each visitor forming "personal associations and judgments about smells from… their personal experience"; and The Art of Scent (MAD, 2013) — scent "recognize[d] and celebrate[d]… as a true artistic medium rather than just a consumer product," the fragrance "specially modified to resist sticking on skin or clothes" against cross-contamination. The chapter's summary claim: smells "facilitate the recollection of memories, emotional response, and a multidimensional impression of a place, object, or experience" — and museums "have only recently begun to exploit the value of smell." See multisensory-museum, memory, aromatopia.
source-notes/solomon-2018-public-spheres-hong-kong

Open Questions

Is volatile architecture a theory of architecture or only of exhibition — can the olfactory approach survive the passage from the museum (where scent is an event) to buildings (where scent is a maintenance problem)?
Does Drobnick's ocularcentrism critique hold against the wiki's haptic tradition (Pallasmaa): is smell the sense that completes the embodied critique of the "architecture of the eye," or a marketing-susceptible sense (Borch's consumer evidence) whose political valence is structurally ambivalent?
Can smell be both presentational (immediate, unhyped) and representational (cued, coded 'old') at once — the Holocaust Museum's leather suggests yes; the scented Declaration of Independence suggests the failure mode.

Theme

Phenomenology — the olfactory as the least theorized member of the sensory turn against ocularcentrism.