Smell This: The History of Architecture, Told Through Scent

For those who think architectural history isn’t something to sniff at, a new exhibition at the California College of the Arts aims to convince otherwise.

1 minute read

October 14, 2013, 9:00 AM PDT

By Anna Bergren Miller @abergrenmiller


The San Francisco exhibition, put on by the college’s Architecture Division, comprises reconstructed scents meant to evoke particular times and places. Contributors include architect Jorge Otero Pailos, whose perfume recalls Philip Johnson’s Glass House; and perfumer Christophe Laudemiel, with an olfactory reflection on the Strait of Bosphorus during the Middle Ages.

“[S]mell is often maligned by aesthetic criticism as too ephemeral, too fleeting, to substantiate anything meaningful,” Amelia Taylor-Hochberg writes. “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?”

Friday, October 11, 2013 in Archinect

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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