Scent Thesis First Draft

Laura Skelton The Built Environment David Smiley Thesis Revision 1 10/25/05 Scent and Retail Design My thesis will examine the role of artificial smell in the design of retail environments. The history of scent in Western society reveals strong connections of odor to magic and religious rite, and later to disease and decay. The odor of the city plays a major part in the efforts of urban reformers to eliminate the disease-ridden "bad air" of the city and to bring more fresh air to city dwellers. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, efforts were made to deodorize the city to eliminate these odors. The ideal city was seen as an odorless place. Although scent is one of the first ways that we connect with architecture as children, we are quickly taught that it has no part in the visual/spatial world of architecture. However, in our memories the idea of place is intimately connected to scent, such as the odor of a spice market or of baking bread. In the past several years, many companies have installed scent machines in their retail stores that influence consumer behavior subliminally, convey brand identity through unique scent patterns, and enhance the experience of products in a space through appropriate artificial scenting. The reemergence of this multi-sensory architecture in the realm of retail is all the more appropriate as a part of the feminine space of the retail environment, and signifies the growing expectation of consumers to be engaged on multiple sensory levels by their designed environments. Historically, smell has been condemned in the consciousness of Western society. In ancient times, smell had ties to religious rites of sacrifice, with incense being burned to

cover the scent of slaughtered animals. Malodorous qualities were linked with the occult, and bad smells were tied to evil emotions and intentions. As early as the time of the ancient Greeks, bad-smelling air or miasma was tied to disease, and bad smells were actually thought to be the causes of illness and plague. Doctors would protect themselves from disease by wearing perfumed sachets under their noses, since before the knowledge of germs it was thought that smells were the carriers of disease. With the beginning of the industrial revolution, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in urban centers led to extreme problems with odors in the city. Efforts were made to deodorize the city through paving streets and whitewashing walls. Ever since that time, dangerously bad odors have been thought to emanate from the streets of the city, and so the ability to offer escapes from the unhealthful city air was a selling point of indoor retail spaces. Although it has in large part been overlooked by the Western architectural tradition, scent has always played a part in architecture. The temples of Babylon had perfumed oils in the mortar, so that they always smelled sweet. The materials of building emit their own particular odors, or absorb odors, affecting the sensory qualities of the spaces within. Scent has been tied to the identity of place in memory. The olfactory qualities of particular places in the city, such as a street of cafes, florists, or the street outside of a bakery, play a significant role in shaping our experience of place. In recent years, scent has come to take a prominent role in retail design. Its status as an emotional, as opposed to a rational, sense, allows retail designers to connect with consumers on a deep instinctual level. Scent has come to take a place as an element of the ambient design of a store, much as the choice of color for the walls. Companies infuse the air of their stores with scents designed to subliminally influence consumer mood and

behavior, to reinforce the brand identity of the store, or to trigger certain connotations and memories during the store experience. Studies have shown that scenting malls with lavender or citrus induces shoppers to spend more money without their even being aware of it. Similar tactics are at play in casino environments and restaurants. Companies hire scent-marketing firms to create unique corporate identity smells, and then pump them throughout their stores with scent machines. Other businesses use scent machines to enhance the fantasy of the shopping experience with an added layer of artificially created stimuli. Some toy and infant clothing stores scent their air with subtle baby-powder smells, reminding consumers of the pleasantness of parenthood. The Hershey's store in Times Square blasts shoppers with a faux chocolate scent to enrich the chocolate paradise of their space. Some appliance stores use apple-pie scent machines to encourage customers to dream of the wonderful things they could make with a deluxe new oven. Kroger supermarkets enhance their bakery sections with fresh-baked cookie smells, and their floral sections with flower smells, both from scent machines, creating an artificial reality that's better than the real thing. Traditionally, architecture in the Western tradition has been the deodorized, sterile, ideal forms of masculine architecture, with its emphasis on geometry and the visual over the experience of the other senses. From the time of Alberti, with his treatises on buildings and on perspective representation, architecture has concerned itself with form over materiality and tactile qualities. A building was conceived as an erected geometrical form that viewed from a distance. Sensual architecture is connected to the feminine interiors of domestic life. Subtle perfumes, tactile richness, and interiority are all parts of this fragile architecture. The increased emphasis on smells in the retail world

reflects a shift from the visually oriented masculine architecture of the rationalistic tradition to the multi-sensory architecture of the feminine realm. The world of shopping is particularly suited to this feminine architecture, since in the modern tradition it has always been a female realm. The connection of scent to a woman's perfume is strong in the examples of clothing and cosmetics stores, which use ambient fragrance to entice and to seduce. The connection to the woman's traditional domain of the kitchen and the hearth is reflected in the supermarkets, food stores, and appliance stores' use of scent machines to evoke feelings of hunger and memories of cooking and domesticity. It seems that this emerging use of artificial ambient scents in retail environments brings us full circle from the time of the ancients. In earlier times, scent was used to define place, to give an aura of magic, and to create a sensual pleasure in architecture. Then we entered a period of sanitization and deodorization, where retail environments offered an odorless, air-conditioned escape from the stench of city streets. With the scentmachines of modern retail design, the sensuality of olfactory pleasure is again allowed to be a part of our architectural experience. However, instead of smelling true odors as in the past, the scent architecture of today is a simulation. Though the stores are as sterilized and deodorized as ever, they are artificially re-odorized with the intentional marketing strategies of subliminal scents, brand identity scents, and mood-setting scents. Much as we painstakingly scrub away the natural odors of our bodies, only to re-odorize ourselves with scented shampoos and perfumes, retailers create an artificial sensuality to entice their consumers, creating a realm of perfect fantasy in the controlled retail environment.

Bibliography Aamodt, Mette. "Architecture Smells." Immaterial/Ultramaterial: Architecture, Design, and Materials. Ed. Toshiko Mori. New York: Harvard Design School in association with George Braziller, 2002. Alati, Danine. "Aromatic Architecture." Contract 43.1 (2001): 38-41. Barrie-Anthony, Steven. "On the Radar: On Scent, We've Barely Scratched the Surface." Los Angeles Times 4 Nov. 2004: F.1. Betsky, Aaron. Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1995. Bidlake, Suzanne. "Scents of Real Purpose." Marketing 15 Oct. 1992: 21. Bloomer, Kent C., & Charles W. Moore. Body, Memory, and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Busch, Barbara. "The Scent of Advertising." Global Cosmetic Industry 171.6 (2003): 24. Chebat, Jean-Charles, & Richard Michon. "Impact of Ambient Odors on Mall Shoppers' Emotions, Cognition, and Spending: A Test of Competitive Causal Theories." Journal of Business Research 56 (2003): 529-539. Corbin, Alain. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Daks, Martin C. "Smell, Listen and Spend Money Like Crazy." NJBIZ 18.24 (2005): 1-2. Eichhorn, Barbara J. "Selling By Design: Using Lifestyle Analysis to Revamp Retail Space." American Demographics 18.10 (1996): 44-48. El-Khoury, Rodolphe. "In Visible Environments: Architecture and the Senses in Eighteenth-Century France." Diss. Princeton University, 1996. El-Khoury, Rodolphe. "Polish and Deodorize: Paving the City in Late-EighteenthCentury France." Assemblage 31 (1997): 6-15. Forbes, R.J. "Cosmetics and Perfumes in Antiquity." Studies in Ancient Technology. Vol. 3. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965. Haberman, Clyde. "A Fitting Nobel For the Nostrils of New York." New York Times 8 Oct. 2004: B.1. Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

Holland, Rob W., Hendriks, Merel, & Henk Aarts. "Smells Like Clean Spirit: Nonconscious Effects of Scent on Cognition and Behavior." Psychological Science 16.9 (2005): 689-693. Hosoya, Hiromi & Markus Schaefer. "Brand Zone." Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. Eds. Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong. Köln: Taschen; Cambridge, MA: Harvard Design School, 2001. Illich, Ivan. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of "Stuff". Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1985. Kipnis, Jeffrey. "The Cunning of Cosmetics." El Croquis 84 (1997): 22-28. Le Guérer, Annick. Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell. London: Chatto & Windus, 1993. Lee, Elizabeth. "Dollars and Scents: The Nose Knows, or Does It? Businesses Using Artificial Aromas to Get Customers in Right Mood." The Atlanta Journal – Constitution 22 Aug. 2004: MS.1. Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 19201940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985. Mattila, Anna S., & Wirtz, Jochen. "Congruency of Scent and Music as a Driver of Instore Evaluations and Behavior." Journal of Retailing 77.2 (2001): 273-289. Mayo, James M. The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. Milotic, Daniel. "The Impact of Fragrance on Consumer Choice." Journal of Consumer Behavior 3.2 (2003): 179. Nagourney, Eric. "A Hint of Lavender and the Scent of Money." New York Times 5 July 2005: F.6. Neutra, Richard J. "The Sound and Smell of Architecture." Progressive Architecture Nov. 1949. Neutra, Richard. Survival Through Design. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954. Pallasmaa, Juhani. "Hapticity and Time: Notes on Fragile Architecture." Architectural Review. (date?) Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

Paul, Noel C. "Aroma-added Packaging Aims to Allure You; What Smells Good, Sells. This Well-known Fact is Pushing Marketers – and the Military – to Inject Scents Into its Food Containers." Christian Science Monitor 4 Aug. 2003: 15. Santora, Marc. "How Hot Is It In New York? Take a Whiff." New York Times 30 Jul. 2002: A.1. Sardar, Ziauddin. "Our Fetish for Fake Smells." New Statesman 11 Sept. 2000: 25-27. Siarkiewicz, Agnieszka. "City of Big Smells." Chicago Tribune 11 Oct. 1998: 1. Stokvis, Jack R. "The Evolution of Downtown Retailing: How Suburban Competition Led to Management for Downtown Revival." Diss. Columbia University, 1990. Thomsen, Christian W. Sensuous Architecture: The Art of Erotic Building. New York: Prestel, 1998. Tischler, Linda. "Smells Like Brand Spirit." Fast Company 97 (2005): 52-57. Torabi, Farnoosh. "A Nose for Business." Money Oct 2003: 34. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994. Van der Laan, Judith, & Imogen Matthews. "Out of the Box." Global Cosmetic Industry 171.12 (2003): 52. Ward, Philippa, Davies, Barry J., & Dion Kooijman. "Ambient Smell and the Retail Environment: Relating Olfaction Research to Consumer Behavior." Journal of Business and Management 9.3 (2003): 289-302. Weiss, Joanna. "The Sweet, Fresh Smells of Success." Boston Globe 20 Nov. 2004: D.1. Wilkie, Maxine. "Scent of a Market." American Demographics 17.8 (1995): 40-46. Winter, Drew. "Aroma Therapy." Ward's Auto World Mar. 2004: 12-14.

Books I'm Tracking Down In Various Libraries Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Random House, 1990. (Psychology QP431 .A26 1990 note: unavailable) Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. New York: Zone Books, 1988. (Milstein B2430.B4 M313 1988) Engen, Trygg. Odor Sensation and Memory. New York: Praeger, 1991. (Psychology QP458 .E52 1991) Engen, Trygg. The Perception of Odors. New York: Academic Press, 1982. (Psychology QP458 .E53 1982) Gardner, Allen R. [et al.], ed. The Ethological Roots of Culture. NATO ASI Series. Series D, Behavioural and Social Sciences, no. 78. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994. (see chapter: culture and olfactory communication) (Psychology GN365.9 .E85 1994) Judd, Dennis R., and Susan S. Fainstein, eds. The Tourist City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. (Avery Reserves G155.A1 T597 1999) Lilja, Saara. The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1972. (Butler Stacks 069F HC t.49) Rapoport, Amos. The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1982. (Avery Ware BF353 .R36 1982) Rilke, Rainer Maria. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Random House, 1983. (Milstein PT2635.I65 A83 1983) Uleman, James S., and John A. Bargh, eds. Unintended Thought. New York: Guilford Press, 1989. (Psychology BF441 .U54 1989)