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Dedicat ion
Bachelors of Architecture thesis in the spring semester at Cornell University. It would not be possible without the advisors Mark Cruvellier and Mark Morris, who provided invaluable guidance, input, and support. Further thanks must be extended to the Mediterranean front. First, to Alessio Rosati, because the makings of this idea began at Roscioli in Rome in the spring of 2013. Since then, his support has transcended both time and distance, and has been instrumentally and fundamentally important. Then, to Davide Marchetti, for telling me that anything is possible... And then proving it. The thesis was completed with assistance by Aquinnah Wong, B. Arch. ‘19 and Saira Akhtar, M. Arch.’14, without whom it would not have been achieved. To my family and friends, for putting up with my insane schedule, understanding my passions and always supporting my goals. And lastly, to my Grandma, who taught me that perfume is always the most important part to any ensemble.
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“Architecture, as with all art, is fundamentally confronted with questions of human existence in space and time, it expresses and relates man’s being in the world.” “Our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly.” “Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience, architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity.” - Excerpts from The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa
Table of Content s
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Dedication
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Introduction
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Site Program Scheme
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Review Bibliography
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Diagram: Mark Garcia, The Diagrams of Architecture, AD Reader
Int roduct ion
How can space illustrate the unsee-able? How can it engage our senses? For centuries, architecture has concerned itself with light and proportion when dealing with the body, and thus has become heavily dependent on the visual. This reliance on the retinal perception sets an imbalance with how we relate to space and to one another. It facilitates and furthers a disconnection with the other faculties. This thesis is an attempt to orchestrate the architecture of the invisible, one that is sensed primarily by the nose rather than the eyes. Taking advantage of an abandoned railway tunnel, the work focuses on the mediation of human perception and the earth’s richness of botanicals and essences. Both public and private, the intervention moves from city to garden through a Parisian perfume academy; it becomes a processional episodic experience to understand the interplay of space and scent. This thesis is an exploration to bridge a disconnect between space and the experience of the body within it.
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Site:
The epicenter of the modern perfume world is Paris, France. As fashion houses have adopted and become the main vehicle for commercial perfuming, Paris has become the hub of scent innovation. Historically, Grasse, is considered the world’s capital of the perfumes of the old world. It is here where the museums to the historical ways of perfume are on display as relics to a former sensibility. This disconnect between the two worlds, old and new, has put the perfume world into a bit of a crisis. Today, the art of perfumery has become the art of copying, with a severe lack of innovation and artistry.
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Paris:
Paris, the fashion capital of the world, is home to a unique and abandoned railway called the Petite Ceinture, or the “Little Belt” railway. Abandoned since 1939, it was once the main circulation around Paris, just inside the inner medieval wall. It provided transport of goods and citizens and has since been replaced by the RER. Today, the “Little Belt” is an area that is frozen in time. It has become a wonderful convergence of structure and nature—and alternate reality in the middle of the active city, left to nature to reclaim it.
14th Arr.
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Arrondissement:
A portion of the Petite Ceinture that is particularly interesting is located in the 14e Arrondissement. The 14th arrondissement of Paris (also known as “arrondissement de l’Observatoire�) is one of the 20 arrondissements (administrative districts) of the capital city of France. Situated on the left bank of the River Seine, it is on the southern end of Paris.
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Parc Mont souris:
At the southern corner of the 14e Arrondissement, is the Parc Montsouris. Here, the site straddles an urban edge and the park below the level of the city. The old railway is entrenched and has a large amount of overgrowth above it. The park itself is know to have been a place of fascination for the surrealists of Paris’ past, most notably Robert Desnos. Today, it continues to serve as a railway juncture. A main stop of the RER is located in the center of the park, and crosses over the site perpendicularly.
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Here, where the forces of nature and the mechanizations of its previous life, is where I have chosen to situate my thesis. I feel that as an edge condition, it is a site that is neither within the city or outside of it, but rather an in-between threshold where, in a sense, time is almost suspended.
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Program
Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aromatic compounds, used to fill or imbue the human body, animals, food, objects, and living spaces with an odor. Perfumes have been known to exist in some of the earliest human civilizations, either through ancient texts or from archaeological digs. Perfumery, or the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, and was further refined by the Romans and Persians. Modern perfumery began in the late 19th century with the commercial synthesis of aroma compounds such as vanillin or coumarin, which allowed for the composition of perfumes with smells previously unattainable solely from natural aromatics alone. Today, there are as few as seven “Noses�, or master perfumers, in the world.
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Perfume
This is the instrument of perfumer: The Perfumer’s Organ. The organ consists of a series of shelves upon which the bottles containing raw materials used in perfuming are arranged. The piano is designed so that the perfumer can easily reach all of the bottles with either hand. In other words, all of the most frequently used ingredients are grouped together in a small space. Essentially, the piano contains the perfumer’s olfactory palette. In the middle of the piano stands a precision weighing scale, indispensable for combining the different raw materials or olfactory elements in the most exact doses. The creation of an essence is a simple process of accurate weights and measures, informed by a well-refined nose.
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Perfume
The word perfume derives from the Latin per fumum, meaning “through smoke.” Any fragrance that is created falls into certain categories. These categories provide a description of the type of scent the perfume is, and the notes that went into it. These categories form a spectrum, with eight distinct classifications: waters, greens, citruses, florals, fruits, fougère (ferns), orientals, ambers and woods. These categories can overlap to form more complex descriptions. For example, an oriental-wood fragrance. These fragrances are constructed through the composition of different essential oils.
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The Mechanics
The process of obtaining these essential oils is through distillation. There are two main ways that oils are extracted: dry distillation and steam distillation.
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Steam Dist illat ion
Steam distillation has been used for hundreds of years and today remains one of the most favorable methods of extracting essential oils. Technically, if the oil is not extracted using a distillation process or a cold press, it is not considered an essential oil. For the extraction of essential oils using this method, the botanical material is placed in a still and steam is forced over the material. The hot steam helps to release the aromatic molecules from the plant material because the steam forces open the pores of organic matter. The molecules of these volatile oils are then released and evaporate into the steam. The steam is produced at greater pressure than the atmosphere, and therefore boils at above 100 degrees Celsius. This facilitates the removal of the essential oil from the plant material at a faster rate and in so doing prevents damage to the oil. The temperature of the steam is carefully controlled, and is determined by the material being processed. The steam, which then contains the essential oil, is passed through a cooling system to condense the gas into a liquid. This liquid is a mixture of the essential oil and water. When the condensed material cools down, the water and essential oil is separated and the oil decanted. The water that is so separated in this process is also used and is marketed as “floral waters� (also called hydrosol or sweet water) - such as rosewater, lavender water and orange water. 33
Dry Dist illat ion
Dry distillation, also known as heat distillation or rectification, entails that the raw materials are directly heated in a still without a carrier solvent. In steam distillation, that solvent is usually water-based. In the case of rectification, fragrant compounds that are released from the raw material by the high heat often undergo anhydrous pyrolysis, which results in the formation of different fragrant compounds, and thus different fragrant notes. This method is used to obtain fragrant compounds from fossil amber and fragrant woods (such as birch tar) where an intentional “burned” or “toasted” odor is desired. When an essential oil contains any impurities, it can be purified by re-distillation - either in steam or in a vacuum, and this purification by redistillation is referred to as rectification.
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Notes
Any fragrance that is created is described as a composition of notes. These notes are experienced in three distinct categories known as the top, middle and base notes. Associated with the notes is an idea of time. The top notes can be experienced in the first 5-10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the middle notes are more apparent. And finally, after 30-45 minutes, the base notes are much stronger and more noticeable.
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Human Body
The human body plays an integral role in perfume. Naturally, it is the lungs that help breathe in perfume, and the oxygen collected gets dispersed into the bloodstream. Oxygen travels down a pressure gradient from the atmosphere, into the mouth and nose. From there it travels through the pharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchi, branches into bronchioles and finally into little air sacs called alveoli. After that it diffuses across the alveolar membrane into capillaries, which then converge into the pulmonary vein, which the travels to heart. The pulmonary vein empties into left atrium, which empties into left ventricle and uses the aorta to send oxygenated blood through the circulatory system. Circulation then plays an important role, as pulse points on the body help the skin to emanate the scent and regulate the skin’s temperature. The skin then acts as a vessel for the fragrance, and certain areas are better for scent than others. Heat is an important factor in bringing out the notes of a fragrance, and certain areas of the skin disperse more heat. These, along with pulse points are ideal areas for application of scent.
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The Brain
Smell is the body’s most instinctual sense. Smell, like taste, is a chemical sense detected by sensory cells called chemoreceptors. When odor molecules stimulate the chemoreceptors in the nose, they pass on electrical impulses to the brain. The brain then interprets patterns in electrical activity as specific odors and olfactory sensation becomes perception -- something we can recognize as smell. The only other chemical system that can quickly identify, make sense of and memorize new molecules is the immune system. But smell, more so than any other sense, is also intimately linked to the parts of the brain that process emotion and associative learning. The olfactory bulb in the brain, which sorts sensation into perception, is part of the limbic system -- a system that includes the amygdala and hippocampus, structures vital to our behavior, mood and memory. This link to brain’s emotional center.
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The Scheme
The scheme consists of several distinct moments along the linear rail track. 1
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The Entry The Botanical Cells The Bar and Distillation Area The Studios and Scent Rooms The Master’s Studio The Exit/Emergence into the Parc Montsouris
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The Ent ry
Here is where city and garden merge. Upon entering the site through a large trellis, the visitor is guided through a structure that supports greenhouse cells. This is where many of the products for distillation are grown throughout the year.
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The Underground Bar
Here is where human and nature collide. Now totally underground, the bar begins the spatial zone of distillation. Here, both the oils and the body is prepared for perfume. The bar continues along the axis of the garden, and serves as a crucial point in user-interface. Alcohol is an integral part in the perfuming process, as it becomes a vehicle for dilution for the oils. It is also simultaneously preparing the skin by momentarily dilating and then sealing the scent within the skin’s pores. In moderate amounts, alcohol can cause blood vessel dilation which improves circulation. This is why people report feeling warmer while they are drinking. Improved circulation means that the rate at which your body’s natural frequency interacts with perfume is increased, thus increasing your natural chemistry and ability to interact with the oils in perfume.
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The St udios
Eight studios occupy the tracks in the uncovered area within the park. This portion of the old track is put back into use, as the studios are rearrangeable. Branching off from this, new tracks have been added to serve as turnoffs into the north wall. Within the wall are eight scent rooms and their corresponding libraries, The studios serve as a regulator to the libraries, and the shelves of perfumes correspond to the furniture and openings within the glass studio. This allows the studio to function as a space of learning as well as a place of study. The scent rooms are derived from the composition of the eight categories of fragrances. Their forms constructed from the timing and anatomy of the different scents, their properties, and characteristics. Above the scent rooms sits an atomizer. This lamp-post sized apparatus disperses the scents from the studio and scent rooms below, and is featured above each of the different rooms. A fragrant vapor is emitted into the park at times controlled by the students and the master.
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The Master’s Organ
Here is where the Master is placed, serving as a gatekeeper and composer. His organ is situated at the entry to the exit tunnel, where he has the ability to control the scents that are released through the main atomizer. This atomizer also serves as the main apparatus around which the exit circulation occurs. Its introduction into the park is both a marker and a folly, finally punctuating the grand inner-workings of the world below. It is here where the main idea of the architecture is finally revealed to the world above.
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The Final Review
The following is a transcription of Erin Pellegrino’s thesis review at Cornell University on 10 May 2014. The thesis is to fulfill the requirement of a Bachelors of Architecture Degree and took place in the Bibliowicz Family Gallery at 2pm. Thesis Student: EP – Erin Pellegrino Advisors: MC – Mark Cruvellier, Department Chair, Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture, Cornell University MM – Mark Morris, Visiting Associate Professor; AAP Director of Exhibitions and Events, Cornell University Faculty Critics: MW – Mary Woods, Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory, Cornell University VW – Val Warke, Associate Professor, Cornell University. Invited Jury: KD – Kevin Daly, Founder, Kevin Daly Architects. EF – Eva Franch i Gilbert, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Storefront for Art and Architecture SK – Shelia Kennedy, Principal, KVA. BN – Ben Nicholson, Professor, SAIC and IIT.
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Annot at ive Key Response
Description Clarifying Question Representational Discussion Nostalgic Debate
** Indistinct Chattering**
EP- Hello. My name is Erin Pellegrino and my thesis is about scent, and sensing space. I started off really interested in how architecture can really be orchestrated and how an environment can be created in a way that you don’t necessarily need visual cues to take you through a space, but rather other senses can be adapted and interacted with for that gain. The project is located in Paris, in a site called the “Little Belt” Railway, which is an abandoned train circuit that circled Paris just on the interior of the medieval wall. It is located in the 14e Arrondissement, and the site straddles an urban edge and the Parc Montsouris and it basically has a very subterranean condition. The railway is entrenched with a large amount of overgrowth above it, so you do not know it is there until you sort of stumble across it. It is essentially invisible to the city. The program is that of a Perfume School and for just a bit of background on the world of perfuming, is that is used to be a very “handed down” type of profession. It was something that was an apprentice education, one worked with a perfumer, he taught one everything one was supposed to know about perfume. Today, you need a chemistry degree and it is essentially the art of copying. The perfumer will sit down everyday at his desk and have a flight of 6 new scents that he is meant to copy and sell because those make money. But, the design aspect of scent, and the magical essence of this really invisible but beautifully smelling liquid doesn’t exist anymore. There is only one other school in the world right now that has this apprentice-based learning style. It is one master and twelve students and located in Versailles. A student goes there for one year and develops a nose, which means he spends a lot of time in gardens and growing things and smelling things and basically developing a palate so that he can learn to interact with scent in a different way. The human nose can detect 10,000 different smells and it
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only takes 8 molecules to create a detectable smell. So that is basically some background on where the site is and these are some photos of the condition of growth in this area. Again the site is an open trench within the city, a tunnel which tunnels under a street and brings you up into the garden—rather, the Parc— and now I’m going to ask you all to reorient yourselves 180 degrees to the other wall. What I’ve done is try to create a procession from city to garden, so that while yes this is a perfume school, it also becomes a new way to enter the Parc Montsouris. It is a new way to come from the city into a greenhouse structure, which is where some of the ingredients that will be distilled will be grown. To clarify, not in any large quantity, this is not meant to be any sort of master production house to sell, but mainly just to learn. It is a large growth of a lot of small quantities of different things, throughout different times during the year and in different conditions. You enter into a cell of growth, and what ends up happening is that you start to get a separation of visitor and garden, which manifests as a separation in level. One descends down into the space until you are finally at level with the greenhouses, and one emerges again to the exterior in the lower gardens. And this condition is much like the images, where the growth is overtaking the space from above and below. That walkway then leads you into the tunnel, which is where the distillation begins to happen. The machines are in here (referencing the model) but they are also on the wall (referencing the gold details in the drawings). In the making of perfume, alcohol is used to deliver perfume. Oil is very powerful, so to dilute it, alcohol is used. So, what that does for the human body is to momentarily open the pores of the skin to take in the scent, and then constrict the scent and hold it, and then your own body begins to alter that depending on your own chemistry. So located in this area is also a bar, because in the process of essential oil distillation the wasteful output is fragrant water, which in a lot of cases can be
used in drinks—rose water, things of that nature—and so here you have a mix of the bar and equipment, and as you leave the tunnel you enter the spaces of the people who study here. There are eight studios, they are movable cubes that exist on the track and inside of them is housed what is known as the Perfumer’s Organ. Which is that desk (Points to drawing on the wall) which organizes all of the different oils. A perfumer will start with perhaps three when he is first beginning his studies. Then he will begin to learn and understand all the ways he can combine three oils. And then eh will finally get to a point where he will magically put together a large amount of those scents into a composition that deals with time. With perfume there is a breakdown of top, middle and base notes, as a basic breakdown of how the perfume evolves. That is how a scent is released and experienced. You then have eight—roughly eight—different categories that scents are broken into after they are crafted. Woods, Ferns, Orientals, Greens, that sort of thing. The eight studios correspond with differently shaped rooms that deal with this idea of a top, middle and base note in terms of how they are shaped. For example, this is the woods room, and most wood perfumes—rather perfumes defined as a wood composition—have a very base type of leveling. Their magic really comes out on those last notes. The rooms tend to correspond to that. Only this piece of the model comes out but that pedestal houses the eight different types. Basically those rooms are denoted by waters, greens, fruits, florals, ferns, orientals, ambers, and the woods, which was what I just showed you. So as someone is progressing through this site, they’ve gone through the gardens, gone through the bar—perhaps had a drink or two—they’ve seen the studios and what is happening in there and now they are coming through to the end and they reach the masters studio. And this whole orchestration is really his instrument. He controls all of the distillation and output of the oils, and he doles them out to the students when they are ready to receive them, he controls what gets sent up into these atomizers that exist in the park at the pedestrian
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height, which are directly over the scent rooms. He also has his organ along with a larger mechanical organ attached to the wall which sends these scents up. And then the exit sequence takes you further unto the tunnel until you ascend up a spiral stair sequence along the periphery of the grand atomizer, which then releases you up into the park as well as carries the grand scent chosen by the master to be released at the tree canopy level. The idea is that this is mainly something that is really as much of an orchestration as much as it is architecture. The idea is that parks are meant to be some reprieve of city life, and the site was chosen as this really interesting merge of nature and something that is incredibly articulated—such as a railway. And that is really how I see perfume, as taking nature and really boiling it down to its essence and amazing aspects and reintroducing it to the park so that there will be this dual existence. The studios can tuck into this wall and close it out, and then in a way they act as a three dimensional library ladder, as the shelves and openings within the studio correspond to the library of scents that exist outside of the scent rooms, waiting to be taken into those spaces and experienced. The axonometric takes you through this scheme in a boiled down version, trying to show mainly through line what is happening here, the tunnel aspect acts a sort of hinge on the project, as it exists right at the point where city becomes garden. So I see that as an important moment in the scheme. KD: With regard to the thesis, you had this statement about way-finding and spatializing scent, and does that only happen in the park? EP: In the park, yes, but also on the city side, as this large wall acts as a continuation of the urban edge but is actually a trellis. So your visual cue on the urban end is this unfolded garden that presents itself emerging from the sunken trench to signify what is really existing underneath. As I mentioned before this railway is
incredibly hidden in plain sight. It is pretty amazing how many people walk by this trench without even knowing that this incredible atmosphere exists below. So the idea is that this garden wall acts as this billboard to the project on the urban end, and that one sees this idea of the park and the essence of it presented to you on an urban face. EF: Can you tell me about the different sizes of these excavations of these scent rooms. EP: Yes, so basically it has to do with the time and composition of the perfumes. So positioned here are the water-based compositions. So these are very shortlived. So what ends up happening is you wont know someone is wearing it, until you are very close to them, whereas at the other end of the spectrum--the woods— you will smell it from across the room. So the idea is that the radius of the scent’s ability to be dispersed and that is also where the alcohol plays into it because it helps your body itself give off scent. EF: And why are there eight? EP: So there are different categories to perfumes, some of them overlap, so you can have both an oriental and a woody perfume, but basically there are categories... EF: And you said there were 7 essential ones? EP: Eight. EF: Oh, okay. Good. Yeah, yeah. EP: And then people to tend to break them down even further into categories that go on and on but mainly you have these eight types of scents. If you go to a perfumer and describe what you would like, most likely they will say, “ Okay, well let us try a woods or green type scent” And that then depends on whether you want something strong or something light. 77
EF: There is always something when architecture, and a thesis, takes a project that is to unveil some of the things that constitute architecture yet they are not always necessarily present. Um, in the 18th century there was an entire group of people who were obsessed with measuring and producing devices that were not necessarily architectural but more personal to produce space of olfactory qualities. And I really like that something that is always condensed in a drop is able to be spatialized, and open, and experienced through the space and the land and the chemical processes that occur. But as well through this space that is the atelier and the studio of the artist. That is there to somehow help you to understand those processes. Um, I just received this morning an email from one of the seven noses that are right now in the world because he has accepted to do smell for us as an office for a project that we are doing in Venice. And it is to make a smell it usually takes someone who knows that and what we have asked him to do is to do a historiography of the smells of the office. Probably you know how different Milstein Hall smells than Sibley Hall, right? But how does the office or the studio smell when in the 50’s there was glue versus the foam versus... So what I like about this is that it has the potentiality by changing the smells to understand the historiographies of cities, of buildings, in a way that when we look into those maps of Paris we know that that smell is not the one what we have today right? So what I like about your project is that the thesis embedded within it is first, looking to some spaces that are the olfactory architectures that we too often override, and then try to find a relationship of that versus the idea of the museum or the experience of the visitor in a site condition that is, for me, still less interesting. I would like to see this as a public life, for me a thesis is always a question of “Could we see this elsewhere? Would this still work?” And you say that the ecology of the olfactory and the olfactory space of learning is a linear space of sequences where eight of those different morphologies need to be spatialized in order to be comprehended. So I don’t think it is
resolved, I just think it is a great project that opens up a great thesis and I think you have really done some incredible drawings that are very much coming out of your own sensibility. Even if they are very much extremely melancholic of an architectural system of representation that we might all be over it already and you are still not, and I think that is okay. And you will get over it when you are ready. But because I think there are other ways to represent what you are hunting but it is a fascinating project with a thesis, so it’s good to see one. SK: I also very much like the project, and I think that there is more that we need to sniff out here about your thesis and about your intentions and what you want to do. And there is a representation project that is quite specific and a lot of energy spent in the material of this project. There is perfume; there is wood, there are nails, clock parts... I don’t think that it is coincidental that she picks this railway, this paradigmatic 19th century means of transport. So I am kind of wanting to hear you speak more about what seems to be not only nostalgia but maybe a mandate or an invitation— depending on how you see the train track—but do you want to meld this idea of perfumery which is light and airy with this idea of hobbit infrastructure and crafted brass workings? Can you tell us a little bit about the vocabulary of the project? EP: Sure, well, basically in my research in perfume there is a definite turn in where it became less of an art and more of a commodity. You know, it is probably one of the oldest things that exist. The Egyptians made perfumes, and now, it is less my mandate on the world of perfume but rather what I have read from critics about how disappointed people are that there are no more “noses” and that we are down to the last bit of them. And the problem with that is, although I guess it is a luxury because we do not need perfume to survive, but there were these great people who made these fantastic scents. And a good example I think is Guerlain. And Guerlain just stepped down a
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few years ago as the last in the line of that family that still made perfume and he handed it off to another person. This sort of idea of passing things down is getting harder and harder because you are basically asking people who want to study this sort of thing to get a chemistry degree. And while I’m sure they can do it, perhaps the people who are very interested in this are not necessarily chemists, and my idea is to take the model of the school in Versailles and bring it maybe into the world of the commodity. And Paris is that world, it is a fashion capital, it exists here. And the offices of a lot of the large fashion houses now exist in Paris and those people who used to create those perfumes in Grasse are now in the city with secret gardens on the tops of buildings. And it is all a very clandestine thing, which in a way is why perfume is the way it is and why it must be copied from one another, but maybe the idea of bringing this back down to the park level and helping people see what it is about. I must admit I have a sort of fascination and obsession with the way those machines work and how they look and those particularly aren’t used anymore is the fact that those machines tell you about the qualities of the things that are going in them. The machine on the top is the steam distiller, and it uses wet distillation to distill things that are lighter and there is a machine quality about that that talks about how light the things that go into them are. Whereas the one on the bottom is a dry distiller, where you put in heavier objects, like the cedar that this model is made out of, would be put inside that. The whole cue there, the knowing by looking at it, how it is going to work, means that a chemist isn’t the one who has to do it, but perhaps an artist who doesn’t have that sort of background can still understand the infrastructure and learn— kind-of how architecture students learn—by looking, and inhabiting, and seeing and understanding this balance between the park and the city and these two worlds. The representation, I will admit I try to hand draw every project, for me, it just goes back to that same sort of mentality, I can do this thing in a sterile environment the way perfumes are made now or I can
sort of really get into it. And making this model, the shop smelled awesome for like, four days, and for me that moment is where the architecture exists. Whether it’s peeling an orange or cutting up cedar, from then on is when you can sort of build space around it. That’s how I chose to approach trying to represent this project to you. It was also sort of a struggle and a lot of testing throughout the semester to how to present something that is invisible. KD: I think that the drawings have a very forlorn quality, and there is kind of this sense that—wait, first of all, amazing project, just an amazing project—but I think that there is a part of it that is about longing or a tragedy in it that is really beautifully captured in some of the drawings that are very mannered. But I think that there is the sense of longing for a lost sensibility and a lost perception. EP: Something that has always been underlying for me, and was an original intention months ago when I was trying to approach the thesis, was a link between scent and memory. Scent is most closely linked with memory, so you can see something, you can touch something, but the fastest way to get your brain to totally visualize and remember something is to smell it. KD: So let me tell you what I’m wondering about your project. EP: Okay. KD: So, and I think there are some very vivid and compelling parts of it, but this idea of spatializing scent and using it to create an atmosphere of space and the fact that you have adopted this railway that looks like a depot because you have reused some of the track. EP: Oh no I added the smaller tracks that turn off of the main track.
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This question/answer is repeated several times throughout the review.
KD: Oh okay, you added those. So my question is why don’t those scents require different amounts of space around them? EP: Well that is why the rooms are different sizes. The actual scent rooms, so they deal with the type of perfumes that are experienced in there, whether or not it is a very intimate scent that you need to be very close to or one that is wider. What is shown here is the widest of them, but when you get to the close scents like the water perfumes, it is a much closer and smaller room for maybe only one or two people at a time to understand and live through the composition of the scent. KD: And I assume you visited the site, I mean it looks like you did. And I would think that would have a very particular smell to it. EP: Yes, well when I visited it unfortunately it was raining. So it had a very damp wintery smell to it. KD: Yes, well I would think that would have a very present aspect of this as kind of this laboratory. And when we think of laboratories there is kind of this presumption of neutrality of the space. And this space would have 200 years of history and stuff growing and things like that. And I’m just wondering in terms of the selection of the site how did you balance that with the subtlety of the undertaking of program. EP: Well, what interested me about it, is that I was reading about perfumers and how they tend to get inspiration, and what is interesting is that yes they must work in a lab because there is something about oil and keeping things sterile but the very good ones have private gardens that they maintain and visit at least once a day for about an hour, because you have to keep your nose on par and you have to be smelling things constantly and smelling new things and old things trying to test yourself and dissect the smells. So
a sterile environment is actually what ends up killing perfume, because the person making it doesn’t have that sort of minute sensibility of the differences in scents. And that is another hypothesis as to why the perfume industry is getting to this point because they work in these lab-coat environments that just copy other creations, that they are no longer necessarily on the grand scale experiencing what the very few elite have been trained to experience by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers to actually do this sort of thing. This is an issue of representation, Val was confused by an unrendered section of the drawing meant to be in the background.
VW: Well in that third view, it seems as though you are sort of whitewashing the space? EP: No, I tried to only render the moment of the section cut and let the behind sort of fade to the background. My intention is not to take away what exists here and the arching of the site and the measure and the meter. That is actually my problem with how they are developing this site in other areas of Paris. They are turning it into another Promenade Plantée, but the problem is that they are infilling the entire thing and ruining some of the really great aspects of the overgrowth and the infrastructure. They’re choking it in my opinion. SK: You know, um, you’re talking about a lot of stuff, but I’m trying to take in what this means for architecture and specifically the architecture that you are presenting so I think that if you could really specifically point to things in your drawing that you are talking about that would help. I guess that when I squint my eyes, I am kind of confronted with a weird fact, which I do not know if it is intentioned by you or not. But this seems to be, and yes the subject and the vehicle is perfume, but this appears to be a critique of technology, and maybe the technology of speed. What is at stake is the act of nature and the environment. When you squint your eyes and you see the force of the dark things that are blotted out and the dark trees above, you have, whether you intended them or not, we have a very thin and fragile plane of
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green, and I am curious about that. I’m curious about whether or not you can use a different vehicle for your topic. Yes the vehicle is perfume, but is there a larger topic here? I’m curious about that. I don’t feel as though the main goal was a critique on technology, although I am not totally unhappy with that assessment. It is apparent that I feel it is important to maintain some form of analog connection, given the representation. However, the technology used here is not necessarily very different to what is done today, but rather a return to the machines that resembled their function in their form.
EP: I would like to think there is a larger topic, I crafted a very specific scenario and I am aware of that. In trying to deal with the senses when I was figuring out what to do for a thesis the question of program was a huge question because you can technically do it with a number of things, you can deal with any of the senses, but to make things somewhat easier on myself I chose one, and perhaps the most obvious thing that can go with smell. This is probably the only time I’d ever really be able to do a project like this, and my goal in this case was to allow myself to work in this bubble of this world I created so that when I leave here I have a sensibility of not only everything that needs to go into the design of a building but also the basic way humans can read a space. That is not only visual, you know there is a texture to this wall, there is a temperature, a smell, a sound. All of those to me are what really create architecture. EF: I think Shelia’s question—and you are answering very well—but the implications of what Shelia’s asking is, apart from having these machines which produce perfume, if we now say you go outside and you arrive to an office and they say “We want to hire you because you have a sensibility towards the architecture of smells and we are interested in that.” You are not going to say “Well you need to create a laboratory and plug something that is going to make a smell” and I have to say that I’m not sure how many of you are on the verge of not being able to smell anymore because I cannot stand the smell anymore, and that is a problem of smell that is different from sounds or sights because it stays with you. So the question is how do we work and deal with smell that is something that is not the subject matter, but is one of the tools by which architecture is able to construct space. And I think that is what has been asked. And it doesn’t need
to be in the project, but I’m sure you have thought about it.
Slightly off topic.
EP: Okay. I misunderstood the question. Okay. During the process of this, and I guess it would be the opposite of what I did here, because I’m trying to extract it, and capitalize it, and show it. So, I’m starting with a scent and trying to exploit it. In architecture, we do not begin with a smell. Architects have a material palette, but for me, I guess, I do try to understand what a building smells like. I had the opportunity to go to Norway recently and immediate things are those stave churches, and you know it’s black and it almost doesn’t matter what it looks like because when you go inside you can smell the tar and the wood and the age and there is an opposition to that because we have a lot of new building and its sort of sterile and you don’t have to smell it. But I think with the proper sensibility of an architect, coming to a space in today’s day and age, you can sort of use this idea of composition through material and sequencing and sizing to actually sort of create an atmosphere which in the beginning—and now in the end—I wanted to work with atmosphere and what that could mean. And I chose scent as a way to do it but there is texture, sound. I guess I could have approached this through a music hall, and dealt entirely with music but that had been done before. EF: One of the contributions I would have very much appreciated, because I am very much interested in this project too, is means of representation. Once you start drawing you are going to start designing. And we still don’t see the smell, and I think that as a continuation of this project, I would love to see it somewhere. BN: Erin, I think in this project you’ve outdone yourself, and so congratulations for that. I’m speechless about the project. I am trying to find a way through your own rhetoric and your enormous amount of research where I can be left alone in the project to actually start smelling things. And there is a great sense
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I agree more with Ben Nicholson’s reading, in the sense that the machines serve their purpose functionally but also maintain a didactic role within the project as well.
of mechanical didact, which works with the Parc Montsouris, which was one of the surrealist’s favorite places. And it’s as if you made a project that is not of this age, but one that tries to imagine what it was like when Parc Montsouris was invented. On one end you could read it as nostalgia but you could also read it as a provision for what was left out of Parc Montsouris, in a constructed manner, rather than something that you would find there. So there is a tension with the period which is the site here, that you have provided for. Regarding the silence of the place, I find it in the eight vessels. When those are put in front of me, I don’t need to hear anything else. The forms are evocative, they deal with issues of gravity and containment and which shape you like best. And it is as if you have distilled your own sensibility of architectural space into a singular moment where we are no longer in the place of being didactic. And your model over here, not so much the cube box, but the way that you crawl into that cave back there, that is what touches me. And I must say you’ve got these two poles going on, the first is that of the didact ,that knows your history and chose the site that is absolutely applicable, but also on the other hand you’ve made something which only a computer could make—well kind of not but yes it is happening—so there’s a tension there that is not necessarily resolved. But at least the components of the acknowledgments of yesteryear via the surrealists, etc, and then what that might transfer as. KD: But I think that is where, and excuse me just for one second, but I think the joining of those worlds is what the project needs most. And the conspicuous awkward part is this entry. Where this laboratory world meets this contemporary city is the part that is totally unresolved in the project. That kind of ambivalence that you have in terms of your own sensibility and things like that are the things you need to push yourself to address. I think that having this thing turn into a 40’ trellis is nowhere near the sort of insight and design intelligence that the rest of the project has.
EP: The urban edge was the hardest part for me. KD: Yeah. And it always will be, but every project has got to have a way to get into it. EP: Yeah absolutely, and for me it was when presented with the wall of buildings and Cité Universitaire and this sort of very intensely urban— KD: But this is a subversive project, and you need to make that happen in this moment where you go from the rest of the project into the world. EP: I saw it as taking the face of the park and extruding it over. KD: There can be a lot of ways of explaining it, but... EP: Yeah. It was certainly a hard part to work out for me. VW: Well that’s where I get back to Sheila’s comment about the critique of technology. In that there obviously is this very elegant steam-punk sort of aspect to the thing where the machine is almost primitive-zed as a return to a primitive machinery and the idea that the garden and the overrun site and the ruin that is already cascading into the ruin is somehow revived by this hidden subterranean world of machinery. And the machinery especially in your drawings which is very nice with your gold leaf application, starts with that one machine. And that is where your project seems to actually begin. Otherwise, and that is where I think that you would have to subscribe to this notion that maybe there is a critique of technology going on here, in which case then maybe it is more like this where these things are trying to support desperately these panes of glass which seem more reminiscent of the high-tech world that that (the other half of the project) is not. In here you develop these very clearly as if they were little St. Jerome studies, right, which roll about and have a lot
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of things and a certain maniacal characteristic to them because in order for one to pass the other they would have to move around like a puzzle game so it is always this incredible amount of activity around them. These things, on the other hand, are almost a normative shorthand of a kind of technology that is almost blank. The entry doesn’t seem quite right. You obviously like the fact that nobody knows about this place, that’s what attracted you right away? EP: Yes, yes. It also was a question of “At what point are you aware of what is happening here?” And that was important too because there is a sort of division in the project where you have the natural and what is being grown in it’s original state, and the distilled. And the way is begins to break this ground plane in both ways is totally different because in the park you have this scent dispersion that happens here, which talk about the actual end product and then here you have the foliage, the natural state of these things before that process begins to occur. Which, at first glance probably doesn’t mean anything to a passerby who is just thinking “Okay, it’s a garden.” Whereas when you pass through it here, it forces you to look and rethink what is going on over there as something that is feeding what is going on in here. VW: That’s why I sort of like it in your diagram. You know, what you’ve put here is the alphabet[the oils], and then over there you started making words [perfume]. I almost just want to see this as the alphabet. It seems to me like there is a total chasm. I have never seen the movie, but I believe this sort of entry, while intriguing, isn’t befitting the. More exploration of the entry sequence would need to be studied, however, I believe a refining of the unfolded track re-emerging into the city is not something to completely remove from the project.
SK: Could you not have like a Harry Potter like keyport? Or something? Or portal? Where you go into this adjacent building and you go down a small stair and you have a choice, as if it is like the red pill where you go down it and find yourself there? Because I think there is something that you want to be able to find yourself through almost any circumstance in this world, and the billboard I do agree that part needs a little work.
The language was derived from the language of the machines, and a desire to convey this machine quality at every scale of representation.
The studios were intended to be somewhat normative, as a regulator to the various forms that exist within the wall. The studio was never the focus, but rather, the organ within it was meant to really define the space.
The idea that the architecture would become an apparatus to engage the park was absolutely intentional, which is where the emphasis on technology manifested itself as an integral part in the articulation of the architecture.
MW: But you know Erin I very much like your sections as well and I like this idea that you take the idea of the perfume which is something very personal and tied to an individual body, and then tie it back to this Master who sits at this organ or keyboard and is suddenly going to make that into a public experience. So for me those sections are very, very interesting where you emerge from below ground, but then I am wondering—you know—why is your scent disperser... From where have you derived that architectural language? And I’m also, I think it is an incredible project and that it is really exciting the realms that you are taking this into and thinking that architecture can begin to explore or begin to express, but I’m very intrigued by those eight vials. I’m wondering what has determined their shape? Is it determined by a particular scent and the creation and the essences in some way? I am a little disappointed in your workshops because I think they become such a normative condition, and I realize there is a nice push and pull in which they begin to insert themselves, but then there is this kind of steam-punk kind of thing that is suspended. And I am thinking somehow that the language of the vials could somehow, and not in a literal sense, but each of those workshops could have taken the same kind of character in some sense. I also, one of the things I think about the linear quality and the use of the railway track is going back to the master’s organ, is that it reminds me of a musical instrument, in a sense that he is playing. It is almost like the frets and so this kind of activation of the architecture and then I’m thinking, what does the smell sound like? I think there is a possibility for you, I hope, in order to explore this in terms of other senses that designers normally do not engage in the kind of mixing of the senses and their cataloging. And that integration is perhaps a more violent conversation, but I would really like to see you push that further because it then becomes a kind of activated instrument. BN: I think that design starts when you stop designing.
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And by that I mean were there just to be the eight holes in the land with these very exotic curls of smoke, which actually may be the design. And that you are interpreting this place and doing it without any structure at all. When you make your Appalachian mineshaft, it’s like there has to be an entrance here, and this is what it looks like and on and on and then it can’t speak for itself in it’s own silence. That is where the project gets really hefty. The things you don’t think are designed, that is where your strength is. EF: I think this is where the idea of the thesis, and we have been talking about this in other projects the entire morning, but how do you deliver either a taxonomy or a new set of terms or a new set of drawing tools that is able to be transmitted to your colleagues or to us. In a way in which we, now we know that there is the project and there is the particular site and there is someone at Cornell that is really obsessed with smells. And that probably she would be able to give us a lot of insights about it. But I would like as well to leave with, “How do we call that?” You know, programmatically? You know, perhaps as a thing that every building should have. In the same way that we have restrooms and we must go and unleash some of our inner workings, should we have a room in a space that is actually able to bring the smells of Cornell? One of the most beautiful things about this place is the smell, maybe not here exactly but outside. So the whole thing is that what kind of culture are you trying to create and how does architecture bring enough powerful design tools to this to say that we are the ones that need to start that conversation. In New York there is right now an entire group of people that is making mappings, of how does the city smell? And obviously that is not a nice map. But the issue of that map is that representationally it doesn’t have enough tools to move from the annunciation to the design. And I think this is where, and you are interested in all the different senses as you have expressed before, we have been talking about synesthesia and how smells and colors and forms are
This idea of cleaning is impossible, because the nose is always breathing in new molecules. However, the best way to smell new scents and distinguish from one another, is to have a constant ambient smell. This is why the environment of the scent rooms all have a continuity of material construction, rather than using more permeable materials.
able to go beyond what we are able to rationalize. Architecture has been very good at keeping itself within light, and form, and i think it is extremely important to begin to open those things up. But in order to begin to go beyond one class that is not only teaching let’s say, spatial composition, but one that is actually teaching experiential composition, you need to give us more tools. But I think that this is a project for everyone. How do we do that? And there are plenty of projects that try to put senses in the forefront and try to observe. And we know that smells are part of this and that we need a cleaning, right, In order to smell the next things? And so what are the minimum variables that have to do with our bodies and the way we perceive that experience and the logic and the essence of that experience in and of itself. And that space of autonomy and embodiment is what really the drawing needs to communicate. MW: I also wonder if your project can’t transcend this particular site. There is a kind of nostalgia of the past and so I wonder, as we are talking about the smells of cities, what would happen if you selected another park where again, the smells are totally different and perhaps there is a kind of grittier and edgier quality to it. I mean I was recently in a high end makeup store in New York and they have a line of eye-shadow called “Industrial Ruin” and so I am thinking, you know, what would happen if I were to transplant this to a very different part of the city. Would there be implications if there were garbage dumps? What would this be like? Because this is about a kind of nostalgia for nature, the technology of the 18th and 19th century, and you know, has this technology of making perfumes changed? I’d be very interested to see you work with that and bring that into a contemporary expression, into a sort of edgier existence. MM: Where you have stopped historically is exactly where the morphology of those machines still sort of represents its function. And, you lose interest the moment those things become modernized and do
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Here the issue of a nostalgic reading is clarified in the best way. I always understood it as less a longing for the past buy rather a return to a justifying for form through didactic qualities. Mark Morris was much better at conveying this than myself.
not appear as they are. So I read the project as less nostalgic but rather how an architect would want to grapple with these invisible qualities. It is always kind of a shock if a thesis student wants to deal with a project on sound or smell because these invisible qualities are always great sinkholes of time and effort as to how one spatializes those issues and visualizes them. I think, for me anyway, you have been able to make them take a step in the direction that those things can visually manifest, and those are really valuable kinds of theses. I think you took a lot of risks, but the fact that you were able to maneuver between model, between drawing and be serious about your research, which was covered on that wall, means that you weren’t just giving a gloss to this topic but rather get into its specificity. EP: And I think that that goes back to this idea that I do not think it creates a prototype. I really don’t. I think it is very specific to perfume, to this place, but it gives me, or it has helped me develop more of a sensibility about it. Because I had an intrigue to what scent could do to create a space. And I chose smelliest thing, that was also nice to work wit,h and I picked it up and ran with it. When we talk about things that are edgier or perhaps things we don’t want to smell, it totally changes the game. I think if I can then go that way with the sensibility of knowing what to do when it smells good and you want to embrace it, that I have the wherewithal to understand how to reverse that. For me the prototype is just going through the motions of this, and allowing myself to get these tools and experiences under my belt and try to practice at this. Perhaps introducing it later on in my work into a project that has nothing to do with perfume, but it will be in the back of my mind that this is going to smell like something. VW: I really like the vials. I just have to say that the vials are very beautiful. They also are a part of that technology. You know, there was a point where everybody always saw rain, they saw rain falling
in ponds and things like that. And it wasn’t until somebody developed that kind of stroboscopic photography that we actually saw what happened with the water drop as it had this reaction with surface tension and began to sort of bounce on the surface and it is exactly this sort of thing. This stop-action and the idea that you are making visible something that we intrinsically sort of know but isn’t visible. And I think that is what you are trying to do with your whole project and I think that’s where it is especially working I think from the tunnel on. MM: Rather than ask everyone to clear the gallery, if the jury could just follow Mark and I to the next room ever so briefly we will wrap up. Thank you, Erin. **Clapping** MW: Erin, I have to ask you, what scent are you wearing? Irrelevant.
EP: Eau De Cartier
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Bibliography
Thinking Architecture, Peter Zumthor Atmospheres, Peter Zumthor Bunker Archaeology, Paul Virilio In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, Mohsen Mostafavi The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard Slowness, Milan Kundera The Art of Memory, Francis Yates. Smell Colour: Chemistry, Art and Pedagogy, AA Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Blesser and Salter The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman, Alexander Tsiaras The Diagrams of Architecture, AD Reader Mark Garcia Therme Vals, Peter Zumthor Swiss Sound Box: A Handbook for the Pavilion, Peter Zumthor Thermal Delight in Architecture, Lisa Heschong Leonardo’s Anatomical Drawings, Leonardo Da Vinci Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places Through the Sense of Smell, Anna Barbara Matter and Memory, Henry Bergson Lived Bodies: Phenomenology and the Flesh, E Groz. The contribution of the five human senses, Panagiotis Hadjiphilippou Body, Senses & Architecture, Karin Chow The Secret of Scent, Luca Turin Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa The Volatile Oils, E. Gildemeister and Fr. Hoffman The Science and Art of Perfumery, Edward Sagarin
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