Smell The City, Make The City

This project focuses on designing a city fragrance for Glasgow. Smells can bring unique identities to places and connect people emotionally to these places. Through participatory design, Linghui explored the unique scents of the city, aiming to encourage people to engage in city-smelling decisions rather than being dictated by others’ stereotypes, perfume companies, or the government — this is about “People Make Glasgow.”

Imagine the scent of a city as if creating a perfume, with top notes, middle notes, and base notes. The base note represents the city’s history, which cannot be changed, but people’s impressions of it still can. The middle note is what we experience in the present, the core of the fragrance. For the top note, is what people think of the city’s first impression. So, this project aims to have people discover and explore the future scents of the city, which will gradually influence the decisions they make in the present, ultimately city making.