The purpose of the project is to identify scents from the nature that reduce stress, and implement the results in urban environments.
We humans experience our surroundings with all our senses, including the sense of smell. Despite this, the current management, design and establishment of urban green areas is biases towards visual features.
There is a lack of knowledge about the importance of natural scents for stress reduction in urban green areas and how scents from nature can contribute to physical stress reduction and increased memory. The knowledge of the connection between smell and well-being is limited to a few plant species.
The ultimate goal of the research project is to reduce stress in cities, help enable rehabilitation from anosmia (lack of smell), and create positive outdoor environments. In addition, the project will create a base for research linked to multisensory integration (sight, sound and smell) of the biological diversity in urban environments.
In this project, we ask people in urban settings about their perception of the importance of natural scents for well-being. We perform experiments where we measure stress reduction through physiological responses to different natural scents, and explore whether there are "threshold values" where natural scents can compensate for a negative visual, sound and smell environment.
We will implement our results by establishing plants in three parks: one focusing on rehabilitative scents in a hospital environment and two parks focusing on multisensory experiences in public environments.
Cover of the Master's thesis by Lisa Ersson.
The scent garden - A garden focused on scent and restoration in Kunskapsparken is a Master's thesis by Lisa Ersson at SLU in Uppsala, where she designed a proposal for a scent garden. Lisa points to the possibilities to design an outdoor environment that promotes the sense of smell. She challenges norms not only in terms of a design for smell but also with a choice of plants, but also with a plant selection that is not only based on traditional horticultural plants - with plants like the Marsh Labrador tea and also species that smell bad. The design proposal is a basis for the possibility of making such a garden at SLU.
Link to the Master's thesis (in Swedish, with an abstract in English): https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/20055/
From the left: Mischa Billing, Marcus Hedblom, Francesca Taufer and Anna María Pálsdóttir. Photo: Erica Torninger.
The team working on studying how odors from nature affect us humans has been helped by Mischa Billing to put the smells from nature into words. Mischa she has previously worked with, among other things, describing smells from nature and especially roses (see her book Rosens doft) and has a lifetime of experience working with smell and taste. Also listen to Mischa's Sommar i P1 where she talks about smells (https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/mischa-billing-sommarprat-2022). Mischa will follow the project and contribute with her knowledge. Here we are at SLU campus on a windy day; from the left Mischa Billing, Marcus Hedblom, Francesca Taufer and Anna María Pálsdóttir.
