Effect of Smell in Space Perception

Abstract

Abstract:Waiting is an inevitable part of life and the spaces in which we wait can contribute to either improve or worsen the experience. This paper covers the process and results of "The waiting room", analyzing if the presence of specific smells has a significant impact in how the room and the waiting experience are perceived. Two different odorants were selected, lavender (relaxing) and orange (stimulating); 63 participants from 32 different countries were assigned into three groups (between-groups approach): Control (unscented), Orange and Lavender. Results show that both scents affected the room and waiting experience evaluation in different ways and overall increased the surrounding space perception compared to the unscented condition. Participants exposed to lavender scent were inclined to rate higher the 'psychological' properties of the room such as pleasantness and warmth; in addition the lavenderevoked memories were emotion based. Participants exposed to orange scent tended to rate higher the 'physical' properties of the room such as brightness and height; orange-evoked memories were object based. Lavender scent had a stronger influence in space perception than orange, suggesting the relevance of congruence and coherence between scent and physical environment when incorporating it as a tangible design tool in architecture.

Effect of congruent scent diffusion on individual creative fluidity: Mental imagery instruction and iconic stimulus as possible moderators

“…It is conceivable that the process of mental imagery activated by olfactory stimulation could be of a different, albeit complementary, nature to that induced by the mental imagery instruction: olfactory stimulation induce more diverse and less product‐related images, and the mental imagery instruction refocus these ‘free associations’ around the product, thus enabling the respondent to produce more ideas. On the other hand, previous research has highlighted the power of scents to improve attention related to a task (Vilaplana & Yamanaka, 2015). The use of scents could thus improve people's concentration abilities, and improve the efficiency of the mental imagery instruction.…”

The human sense of smell in spatial orientation: A state-of-the-art review.

“…Research has in the meantime shown that auditory landmark information can be just as useful for spatial orientation as visual information (Hamburger & Röser, 2014; Karimpur & Hamburger, 2016). However, olfactory information is common in combination with spatial perception (e.g., Vilaplana & Yamanaka, 2015), but rarely combined with spatial orientation (e.g., Gottfried & Dolan, 2003). Therefore, the question remains whether humans use olfactory information as landmark-like information for spatial orientation in everyday life, and if so, how?…”

La experiencia del espacio-tiempo arquitectónico. Una perspectiva fenomenológica del sensorium

“…Debido a la cultura occidental ocularcentrista, la modernidad y los mass media es común que el arquitecto diseñe enfatizando solo lo visible del espacio: la forma, la geometría (Dalton, 2012), lo material-tecnológico y los aspectos estéticos, rezagando los otros sentidos y el papel que pueden tener el olor, el sonido, la luz, la temperatura y el viento (Vilaplana & Yamanaka, 2015). Estos permiten una experiencia más completa (Costantini et al, 2011;Jelić, 2015;Jelić et al 2016), ya que lo 'invisible' acompaña lo visible, sea que provenga del entorno natural o del 'emitid0' por los elementos tectónicos del espacio arquitectónico.…”