The project seeks to understand the relationship between the presence of an odor and behaviors of aggregation in urban space. Smell plays a central role in our sensory experience of the world around us even though we often do not register the sensory inputs from our olfaction. The central question grounding the project concerns if and how the presence of particular aroma chemicals influences spatial navigation in a spatial environment. If it is the case that odor influences our experience of space, I ask: how can olfaction be leveraged to make decisions about the design of urban spaces? To test these questions, I designed two separate trials: one open and another blind. The first was intended to measure the relationship between participants and three separate aroma chemicals that I set into small candles. Using image tracking, I counted the number of impressions (or visits) to a particular candle and asked the participants to write down a scent memory that it evokes. The aroma chemical ethyl maltol showed the highest amount of impressions and most evocations of scent memories. I then created a ‘master’ candle using a large dose of ethyl maltol and incorporated other scent molecules to create a sweet, lavender-cedar scent. For the second, blind, experiment I installed the candle at one of the three study tables in the Urban Planning lounge. I found that the table with the master candle had substantially more sustained interactions compared with the control tables.
