s i Th g n i l i bu . . . s l l e m s y k n u f Hospitals. Old age homes. Green Houses. Public swimming pools. Bakeries. Your childhood attic. Your Grandparent’s home. Your Mother’s clothes cupboard. A Christmas tree near the fire place. Grass after it’s been mowed.
With that said, please, take a moment, and smell the magazine you’re reading. Close your eyes, and take a deep inhale of the room you’re standing in. Go into the attic passage between Oost and West in Bouwkunde and pay attention! Smell it! Doesn’t it smell weird? Different at least? Distinctive? The same counts for the Bouwkunde library, as you step into this space not only is there an audio-visual change: the silence and the wonderful rhythm of the book clad walls; but also, a scent that is loaded with all kinds of memories and associations.
“But a whiff of perfume, or even the slightest odor, can create an entire environment in the world of the imagination.” (Bachelard, Jolas, Danielewski, & Kearney, 2014, pp 191)
One of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had was when I was walking through Amsterdam and suddenly when encountering the scent of the still brewing beer from a nearby brewery, I was transported to the age of about 8 playing tag with my best friends: Jaimen, Alex, Jordan and a few other forgotten names. After school in the playground waiting to be picked up by our mothers; the summer sun is baking the pitch-black tar, Table Mountain glistens in the distance and, oddly enough, this intoxicating sweet malty, wheaty, yeasty aroma is making the air thick like syrup. That aroma was coming from the beer brewery in Claremont close to my school, and still to this day if I encounter that smell, I get taken back to my carefree days of cavorting about jungle gyms with my buddies and my primary school crush on Jessica.
CHRISTOPHER CLARKSON
