Series 2 Episode 13: A Nose for Good Design

If you were blindfolded and not allowed to touch anything, would you be able to tell what building you were in? 

Adding earplugs might be straying into uncomfortable territory, but you would still be left with your sense of smell.

And smell, in relation to design and the part it can play in making life better, is the subject of this podcast.

Transcript

Speaker 0:08

Hello and welcome once again to another episode of Make Life Better by Design with me your host, Kevin Drayton. In an ideal world, I would say good design engages all of our senses. Now we inevitably place a lot of emphasis on sight and probably touch, less so with sound, what we hear, and probably coming in last would be smell. So perhaps it's time that we gave some thought to the matter of smell, scent, perfume, whiff, stench, or whatever else you call it, in the business of making life better. Now, obviously designers involved in the beauty and perfume industries put a very heavy emphasis on smell, but what about in other areas of design? Well, that's what I'd like us to think about today. Now just as different species have more or less acute scent receptors, (just ask your dog: what's so fascinating about that patch of waste ground)? So the susceptibility of people to various scents varies widely. Noses, as those with highly developed faculties within the industry are known, can command high levels of remuneration, as well as huge prestige within the esoteric world of the perfumer. There may well be, there probably is, uh, genetic factors involved in creating a great nose, but the most successful ones also require an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sources, the combinations and the chemistry of the ingredients of their trade. Okay, so when smell is the principal purpose of design, everything else, uh, bottle design, graphics, marketing campaigns can only do so much. I mean, really few bathroom shelves or or dressing tables play host to genuinely off-putting scents, uh, just because they might happen to be in nice bottles. Ironically, one of my worst experiences with scent was during a stint, uh, when I worked in a commercial laundry one summer. This particular company had contracts with various hotels, restaurants, factories, and offices. It was a big operation and my job, uh, along with other people, was to open the big laundry bags when they were unloaded from the vans and sort the contents to go to the relevant department. Far and away the most sick making experience was opening the sacks that came from a perfume factory. The smell was unmistakable and guaranteed to make me retch, but there was nothing conventionally nasty about it. It produced in me a sick headache that I would later understand to be migraine. Other industries, uh, particularly the automotive industry, recognise how much influence scent can play in consumer choice. Some people always buy new cars simply because no one else has had the chance to sully the upholstery with their personal alien fragrance. I suppose that's why several companies try to package a new car smell in aerosols for those of us prepared to indulge in a little subterfuge. Scent can be hugely evocative. Smells like freshly mowed grass, creosote and rain on a hot pavement can set off chain reactions in minds and memories of all edges. Natural smells, if there is such a thing, tend to be acceptable, even if not actually desirable. I can't think, for example, of a timber species that has a nasty niff. And flowers, largely speaking, are the quintessential natural air fresheners, either growing in the garden or held captive in vases indoors. Now once one becomes aware of the stealth power of scent, making life better through this medium can become a, an obsession. During my lifetime, the growth of scented candles, room sprays, diffusers, and incense for building interiors has been astronomic. That's growth in range as well as pure volume. Companies such as, um, True Grace exploit the addictive quality of the scent of old libraries and ancient chapels just as much as it does scents of flowers and herbs. In fact, thinking about it, um, the memory I have of the, well, the first trip as an adult to New York. The thing that stayed with me was the scent of the hotel that I stayed in. It was, um, it was a vanilla type essence, and the hotel was scrupulous about setting scented candles going at, I dunno, sort of six o'clock every evening. I'm sure the associations with the hotel, which was fantastic, um, had a lot to do with it, but I've, I've tried to reproduce that scent, uh, many an occasion in the years since. Where I think deliberate attempts to create nice smells often go wrong, in my humble but extensively experienced opinion, is when artificial scents are enlisted to mask something else. Covering or hiding an unwelcome odour often results in, uh, a cocktail, which is worse than the original offender. On the whole, to my mind, cleanliness creates an atmosphere that's hard to beat. Dust, dirt, grime, dead skin, body fats, animal hair, and food waste amongst lots of other ingredients do not for a pleasant ambience make. Artificial scents added to cleaning products are generally unnecessary if they're doing their job properly. And of course, it can be positively harmful to many people. Some people become brainwashed into believing that a, a company executive's idea of line dried laundry scent, if it's added into a tumble dryer, is better than the real thing. Not so long ago, a lot was heard about sick building syndrome. Uh, this came about in part because of the effect on building users that the increasing use of plastics and various chemical compounds that had found their way into construction. I mentioned earlier that for me, natural materials rarely smell bad, timber being a good example. Well, nowadays raw timber in construction is quite rare. It's more often treated with chemicals to combat rot and pests. It's also formed into things like MDF, that's medium density fibreboard or OSB -oriented strand board -where it's mixed with adhesives and so on and formed under heat and pressure to make use of what might otherwise be waste wood. That's a, a very simple example of how chemicals and compounds unknown to earlier generations found their way into vast numbers of buildings. Uh, carpets and furnishings deserve a chapter to themselves, uh, such is the catalogue of chemicals they can contain. Well, although the primary function of these additives is not to smell nice, most buildings do have a particular odour, and more recent ones or ones refurbished in recent years owe some of that smell to a complex melange of of building fabric, decorations, uses, and activities that go on. Sick building syndrome was just a snappy title for a dilemma continually faced in design. Innovation is desirable, but be aware there will be risks. We all know how asbestos casts a vast shadow from its use for so many years in so many building applications. Another example, arsenic in paint and wallpapers, uh, took a long time, uh, to be properly understood. For how long did we use lead piping in water supplies, mercury in fluorescent tubes? The list can go on and on. The more we learn, the more we realise what we don't know. All of which takes us a long way from how awareness of smell can be used to make life better. Now I've already confessed my ignorance of chemistry, but I must also own up to an ignorance or more truthfully, a blind spot about gardening. It baffles me at every turn. But I do know that a garden, my garden even, is capable of producing gorgeous scents that make my life undoubtedly better. If I actually understood which plants created what scents and how to grow them, rather than just kill 'em, I'd no doubt be an even happier man. And I'm sure a modest window box can produce a similar effect in the hands of a skillful gardener. Now we've touched on what is or can be quite a big subject, but I'm gonna leave you for today with my idea of olfactory bliss. It is an old fashioned grocer's shop which has ground coffee beans, loose teas in big containers, fresh bread, cheeses of every description, and if I'm lucky, bacon, hams and salamis hanging above the counter, ready to be sliced to order on one of those big machines. So there we are. As I say, uh, it's a quick jump into what can be a very, very wide subject and if I'm spared, I shall try and return to it no doubt sometime in the future. If you've got favourite scents or anything that helps you remember buildings or anywhere else, I'd be very, very pleased to hear. So as always, if you have been, thanks very much for listening and I look forward to being with you again before long. Bye for now.