Sniff, Sniff

Partly due to the book I am reading, and drawing upon past literature
and experiences, I was called to notice a certain of my six senses;
smell. The book is "Perfume: the story of a murderer" and is set in
France in the 1700s. The main character Grenouille although gifted
with super human smelling abilities, possesses no natural human scent
himself, therefore other people, not realizing that they can't smell
him, can't put a finger on what's different and are afraid. He is a
strange little man and so obsessed with smell that he commits murder.
It is a strange strange book. I believe that it was translated from
the orignal French.
So as I'm reading this book, my nostrils are flairing, the sense of
smell is tingling! I smell the stronger smells of cut grass and the
subtle smell of cooking rice. In the book Grenouille can walk around
in pitch darkness just using his sense of smell. This got me thinking
of smell-chitecture. Architecture of the olefactor. Common
architecture uses visual as the primary means of impressing the
audience. There is architecture designed for sound, even touch. The
sense of smell is all but neglected.
I was in a store in Edmonton that was selling a line of perfumes with
scents like garden tomato, freshly turned sod, or the smell of the
forest. I was instantly transported back in time to my young years,
helping mom cut tomatoes for salsa, my grandmas garden shed, and lying
under an old tree listening to the sound of birds and breathing in the
musky smell of decaying leaves. Is it possible to create a subtle
smell-scape in an area to set a mood, or to even guide the blind
through a space? Or maybe an art gallery of scents. Not typical
alcohol based perfumes, but natural smells, both pleasant and
revolting to stir an emotion, to create an atmosphere. The art would
appeal to smell itself, like a room that smells like a pumpkin field
in October or the seaside near the pier.