The territory is defined both by what is seen and touched and by what is breathing. The olfactory landscapes, or smellscapeshave historically delineated the limits of the family and the alien, of the safe and the dangerous. The smell saturates the air with chemical information, acting as a deeply territorial sense. It articulates space as an atmosphere full of identity, memory and social meaning. The odors build intimate and collective geographies, demarcating spaces of belonging and exclusion with an effectiveness that often operates below the threshold of consciousness.
Case: The Olfactory Footprint of the City (Markets, Factories and the Lost Sensory Heritage)
Historical cities functioned as an archipelagos of micro- olfactory territories easily identifiable. As the anthropologist Cristina Larrea Killinger documents in "The Culture of the Olors," the pre-modern urban centre was a nostalgic mapping in layers: the area of the teneries was tanned and excreted, the fishing district was sea and salt, the spice market was a tapestry of cinnamon, pepper and nail, and the ecclesiastical district was wax and incense. These smellscapes They were the direct sensory record of economic and social activity, functioning as spatial markers that reflected the urban order. From the perspective of sensory heritage, these odors were not merely incidental pollution; they were an integral part of the identity of a place. Modernity, with its hygienist project and industrialization, began a sensory "cleaning" that homogenized and impoverished these landscapes. Today, initiatives such as the Odeuropa project seek to recover, through historical documents, this lost European olfactory heritage, recognizing that when a characteristic aroma of a trade, ritual or plant disappears, a fundamental dimension of the memory and identity of a place is eroded.
Case: Climate as an architect of the Olfactory Landscape: From Physiology to Territorial Identity
The olfactory geography is built on a physiological and physical basis shaped by environmental factors. The altitude, humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure regulate the volatility, dispersion and perception of odoriferous molecules, creating unique territorial profiles. On the high plateau of Tibet, low atmospheric pressure and hypoxia reduce the effectiveness of the olfactory receptors. The dry and rarity air carries less aromatic molecules per volume, which reduces the ability to detect and identify odors. In this environment, intense and localized aromas, such as the dense smoke of yak manure used as fuel, acquire a defined presence against a more tenuous olfactory background. In contrast, the high humidity of the Lacandona forest in Mexico facilitates the dispersion of volatile and keeps the nasal mucus hydrated, initially favouring a more acute perception. This environment results in a complex mixture of odors in constant decomposition and fermentation (wet ground, fallen fruit, flowers and resins) that can, however, lead to faster olfactory fatigue by saturation. In the Sonora desert, extreme aridity resists the nasal pathways, reducing general sensitivity. Here, aromas are discrete and powerful events: the characteristic smell of creosote of the bush Trid larrea released after rain, or hot mineral dust, are clearly imposed in a minimalist chemical environment. Thus, the territory prints its signature in the chemistry of the air, and the human body is adapted.—or limits—to read it, configuring an olfactory experience fundamentally linked to the climate.
The concept of smellscape, coined by geographer J. Douglas Porteous and developed by researchers such as Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič, allows us to analyze this dynamic. One smellscape is the whole of the odors that characterize an environment, perceived or perceived by an individual or community. These landscapes are actively built (through the kitchen, the burning of resins, the use of disinfectants) and socially negotiated (which for some smells of tradition, for others it can smell of poverty). The smellscapes they function as an invisible infrastructure of belonging. Inhaling the dominant smell of a space (the coffee being toast in a street, the incense in a temple, the chlorine in a public pool) is, on a pre- reflexive level, to ratify our relationship with that place: from a comment, from a devotee, from a user. Conversely, the inability to tolerate or interpret the smellscape from a foreign territory marks the stranger immediately and viscerally. The smell, thus, not only reads space, but participates in its constant writing, weaving the chemical threads that bind a community with its habitat.
