BK Report
EXPLORE LAB FICTIONS Words and illustrations Camille Billottet, Anne de Zeeuw & Aimee Baars
Explore Lab is a master graduation track at the Faculty of Bouwkunde. The intentions of this programme are all in the name: you are free to explore a design subject of your choice; you come up with your own problem statement, choose your own tutors who are familiar with the chosen themes, get experimental with research (model making, collages, interviews, a mix... whatever rows your boat). Then finally, like any other studio, you create a design that supports your narrative, or 'fiction'. I spoke to two Explore Lab graduates, Camille Billottet, and Anne van der Zeeuw, whose projects show an intruiging, alternate architecural reality.
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Camille, what is your project synopsis? Smells are everywhere around us. They affect our mood, perception, localisation, they are part of our everyday life, of sex, food, nature, industry, of others and ourselves, of birth and death. They are present from the womb of our mothers until our last breath; they follow us, intrigue us, bring back memories, seduce us, manipulate us. But in the experience of contemporary architecture, sight and touch prevail and the olfactory dimension of our built environment is often forgotten. This project explores the interactions between the space outside of the body and the body itself, studying how smells matter from the scale of the molecule to the scale of the city. So what are the potentials of this somewhat neglected sense and how could it be used by designers and architects? How do smells affect architecture and the humans inhabiting it? After studying the alterations of materials, construction techniques, spaces but also bodies and minds, the project aims at colonising a district of Lyon (France), through smells and architecture. By means of seven interventions, the visitor visits a SmellTrail, trailing from the busy basilica to the calm bathhouse, alternating areas of rest, meditation, recollection, subtle scents or powerful ones, individual experiences or shared ones. How did your fascination for this subject start? In January 2019, my fellow students and I were asked to write a theory thesis on a subject of our choice. While I started researching the experience of space of the visually impaired, I was promptly led to the importance of the sense of smell for blind people.
