Olfactive Design. The Birth Of A Discipline. Design Olfactivo. Quando Nasce Uma Disciplina

The relationship between the sense of smell and many disciplines of design and architecture is nothing new. Odours are in the materials that build architecture, in the rituals that take place within, in people’s activities, in people themselves. The sense of smell, by its evocative nature, builds invisible architecture within visible architecture. Sometimes these two buildings are coherent, and this produces pleasure, narrative, comfort; sometimes they are not, and this creates discomfort, disorientation, and even illness. Places have smells, cities have smells. Joseph Rykwert used to say that when one of his students mentioned, for example, types of Greek architecture, he would ask him what the Greeks did in the building: what happened on the altar, for example, where cows, bulls and other animals were sacrificed. The great masters of architecture have designed considering the olfactory matrix of their buildings: Richard Neutra, Alvar Aalto, Peter Zumthor, Herzog and De Meuron, Gigon and Guyer, Diller and Scofidio, Philippe Rahm, to name but a few. We are at the dawn of an important new design discipline, that of olfactory design, which not only takes us into a dimension that is still partly to be explored and presided over, but which requires new skills, offers new professions and markets. A discipline that requires transversal and vertical skills capable of exploring an aesthetic beyond sight, an ethic beyond consumption, a sustainability of materials, a healthiness of indoor and outdoor air, a knowledge of the neurological and physiological impact of certain substances on our actions and emotional reactions. Olfactive Design, explores aspects related to spaces, products, services, behaviours, experiences, interfaces and air qualities. It is a discipline whose main objective is not the scenting of environments, but the knowledge of the nature of the materials that are chosen to furnish an environment, the movement of air in spaces, the temperature and humidity of these capable of conveying odours and volatile components. It is a discipline made up of the integration of multiple skills in design, energy, chemistry, mechanics, neuroscience, art, perfumery, history, anthropology, ethnography, marketing, behavioural psychology, etc. Olfactive Design is about designing a dynamic olfactory composition that redesigns the invisible architecture. In fact, designing with the sense of smell means building forms of invisible architecture in space, but also in time, because odours move naturally and artificially and change constantly. It is therefore not a question of choosing a fragrance diffuser, but of choosing the materials to be used in the project also for their olfactory qualities, deciding how to make the air that carries them move. Olfactive design offers unlimited opportunities. A design practice that, despite being present in human history since ancient Egypt, can now become a discipline. The shift from perfumery and decoration to design has transformed it into an area of research and design in the contemporary world, far removed from cosmetics and environmental perfumery, integrated with digital technologies and sensitive to people’s physiology.