Drawing beyond Language and Images : Steps to Olfactory Representations

The paper investigates questions of multisensory representation and design. It focuses especially on olfactory representation and ‘smell maps’, based on the surfacing scientific literature and applications of the sense of smell in urban representation, in perfumery and in what lies between these categories, such as ‘smell art’. The main purpose is that of proposing new perspectives and possibilities to the science of Drawing, and conversely to expand the traditional knowledge of architectural representation. To do so, the paper first offers a short epistemological and theoretical framework, and then compares the state of the art of different representational regimes (visual, aural, and olfactory) and examines their analogies and differences, in order to begin exploring notions – like that of ‘projection’ – and practices that could be transferred or translated between visual, aural and olfactory information. Recent scientific papers, articles, and books – coming from different disciplinary fields which usually rely solely on visual information provided by survey and drawing, e.g., Archaeology – seem to prefigure a transition to an ‘olfactory turn’, just like the first decades of the new millennium led to an enormous and growing interest towards sound, commonly referred to as ‘sonic turn’. Besides, as the modern and contemporary world and culture still focus mostly on the visual and on language, developing tools to measure and parametrize other kinds of information can lead to discover aspects of cultural heritage which are still hidden.