Ex-formation as a method for mapping smellscapes

‘Every city, let me teach you, has its own smell.’

This quote, from an early chapter of E.M. Forster’s ‘A Room With a View’, points to a humanistic understanding of global urban smellscapes with the potential therein for shared understanding.

Exploring options for the communication of Singapore’s ‘own smell’ this visual essay suggests how ‘ex-formation’ may be used as to probe one ontological view of the map…. The main characteristic of an ex-formation approach is ‘unlikely combination as suggestion’ e.g. tarmac roads in place of a river surface alluding to the changing scale of a river from trickle to delta, inedible organic matter packaged in white styrofoam with clear food product labelling suggesting a hygienic trust of shrink-wrapped food over natural produce, miniature underwear on inanimate objects suggesting that objects too might have nudity...

Smell and visual is one such unlikely combination suggesting that invisible smell objects can be pervasive and imbued with colour.

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A visual essay of a qualitative methodology for depicting smellscapes in cities.