Smell and taste are traditionally considered the least spatial of the senses.132 The sense of smell has been traditionally and culturally considered a weak sense which appeals mostly to the more animalistic drives of the carnal body.133
Smell and taste are strongly intertwined, and they both work mostly through the air that is being pulled through the cavities of the head all the way to the lungs. It is thus the very porosity of the body itself that makes it possible to differentiate between the substances that enter it. One can deduce directions from smells, as in tracing the path of a smell in space, for example when smells of cooking indicate the direction of the kitchen where food is being prepared. Or a lingering perfume can help detect the movements of a person in an enclosed space. The senses of smell and taste let the environment directly enter the body, thus tying the sentient body to its surrounding material reality even more. Expansion of the lungs with each breath fills the body itself with minuscule particles from
131 Hall, Lashua & Coffey 2008, 1020.
132 For the relation of the sense of taste to aesthetic experience, see Korsmeyer 1999a & 1999b; Sibley 2001; Brady 2005.
the surrounding space. This cycle of expansion and contraction of the lungs is one of the bodily rhythms of a living organism such as a human being. They take place in almost any given place and situation. Breathing is a prerequisite for the organism to be and stay alive. It also constitutes a rhythm that, unlike a heartbeat, can be most often detected from the outside of the body, as an actual movement of the upper part of the torso.
The air that is breathed through the sensory organs also links an individual body to its environment with the ties of exchanged physical substances. Peter Sloterdijk captures this exchange as a physical merging and engagement of the body with the surrounding space with the example of blowing soap bubbles:
While exhaled air usually vanishes without a trace, the breath encased in these orbs is granted a momentary afterlife. While the bubbles move through space, their creator is truly outside himself – with them and in them. In the orbs, his exhaled air has separated from him and is now preserved and carried further.134
The bubbles encase a space for the used air that has nourished the body and in the form of the bubble is made visible for a brief moment.
The nose adapts to smells very easily. The transitory nature of smells is often considered to diminish its meaning since smells literally evaporate into thin air. Culturally transferred meanings and memories are attached to a certain smellscape,135 but this has been a theoretically vague territory to analyse.136 Within the field of aesthetics, these sensory experiences related to the so-called “lower senses” have been gaining more interest within recent decades.137
Places often have characteristic smells that seem to belong to them in a sense that they are not even noticed after spending a while in the given space. In newly- built spaces, building materials can have very strong smells that range from natural (e.g. the smell of freshly cut wood) to more chemical ones (e.g. some plastics used as floor materials). These smells usually fade with time whereas
134 Sloterdijk 2011, 18.
135 Also odourscape, see Porteous 1982.
136 For a cultural history of smell, see Classen, Howes & Synnott 1993. 137 See e.g. Brady 2005.
other characteristic smells tend to become stronger. Sometimes these kinds of either characteristic or temporary smells can be so strong and disagreeable that a person starts to avoid these places, and changes his or her routes in order to avoid the smells. This kind of “rerouting” happens more often than would seem likely and as a type of behaviour it is automatic to some extent. In any case, it is telling of the role that smells play in spatial experience.138
Smells tend to remain stronger in small, confined spaces. Intensive smells can thus be associated with a smaller spatial scale, although this is not altogether obvious in all cases. The invention of hygiene as a practice and a ritual has diminished the amount of odour and made human environments more sterile for the sensory organs. On the other hand, people of a certain era and culture can be so used to the smells of their contemporary environments, such as different pollutants and chemicals, that they are not detected any more.
‘Nose-blindness’ regarding one’s own home is an especially prominent phe- nomenon. One gets so accustomed to the familiar olfactory microenvironment there that the individual can no longer distinguish even bad odours, let alone a certain characteristic smell. A place is marked with smells, even though one would not recognise those smells anymore. Environmental smells function in a somewhat similar way, even though much depends on how consistent the smells attached to a certain environment are.
Sometimes larger areas such as cities are affected by environmental smells originating from varying sources. For example, in southern Finland the small town of Valkeakoski was known until the end of the 1990s for its sulphuric smell reminiscent of rotten eggs on account of the fumes produced by the local paper mill factory. My childhood elementary school environment of Pyynikki in Tampere was often marked by the distinct smell of a brewery nearby. I have understood that the smell of Valkeakoski was pretty much a stable one, and its inhabitants got used to it, whereas the brewery smell spread around only once in a while causing the kids to wrinkle their noses in the nearby school yard. Nowadays, environmental smells have most probably become less invasive.
Industrial smells are more rare in city centres but some smells persist, such as exhaust fumes, even though they too have changed as new petrol qualities and filtering technologies have been developed.
In many cases, environmental smells evoke strong memories among those whose lives have been bound at some point to places near the sources of these smells. One has to keep in mind that the sense of smell varies a lot between individuals and there is some evidence that there are gender-associated differences in olfaction. Age and lifestyle factors (smoking, for example) also affect the sense of smell surprisingly directly, yet the change might be difficult to assess even by the individual and be manifested as a loss of appetite or other indirect result. Degradation or even total loss of the sense of smell has wide consequences for the individual’s well-being. On the other hand, oversensitivity to smells has often been described as very debilitating, preventing people from going to concerts, other public events or spaces, where the abundance of smells, usually chemical-originated, is simply too much for the sensory system to take in.
Mould, mildew, and other problems related to air quality in buildings can be sensed as a host of uncomfortable symptoms and smells. These kinds of allergic or otherwise oversensitivity-related reactions are nowadays collected under the loose description known as the Sick building syndrome (SBS).139 Hypersensitivities of any kind unavoidably affect experience and thus eventually also the relation to the space that houses the irritants causing them. At least in Finland air quality issues have been a growing problem linked to some of the construction choices typical to modernist architecture and especially their unsuitability to the at times harsh Northern climate.
All in all, getting used to environmental smells might not directly affect the spatial experience, but changes in olfactory experience strongly mark the points of entering new areas in buildings and in cities, for example. It seems likely that smellscapes affect our relation to spaces on a much wider scale than is consciously grasped. The practice of olfactory design takes into account the strong associative power of smells, and the phenomenon of sensory adaptation is very
strong with smells. In perfume shops, for example, coffee beans are sometimes provided to be smelled in between different perfumes in order to “refresh” the nose. Otherwise the capacity to differentiate between olfactory stimuli is totally lost after a while when the sense of smell becomes “numb” and temporarily stops distinguishing different smells.
Apart from the sense of smell, taste seems to concretise in the “mouthfeel” as the texture perceived by the mouth, namely in how something is sensed in the mouth by its inner muscles and movements of chewing or sipping, for example. The act of eating in itself means literally chewing down bite-sized parts originating from the environment. Eating as an act consists of incorporating these parts into the ecosystem of one’s own body. Some aspects of eating disorders might be understood as a response to one’s anxiety-provoking and uncontrollable environment. At least for infants, the choice of putting or not putting something into their mouths can be the only way to gain a sense of control over their own environments. In the end, however, these formative spatio-dimensional exercises have probably less to do with actual spatial experience, unless one relates especially strongly to the story of Hansel and Gretel.