Lab workbench, glassware cabinet, and materials fridge.
The research-informed design and infrastructure of the Aroma Inquiry Lab reflect insights developed from my site-specific doctoral field work research on aroma-focused learning ateliers and scent-themed features in the built and natural environments, such as the UNESCO Heritage site of Grasse, France [as described in my dissertation] and other scent-rich learning environments I have visited and practised in elsewhere in North America. Ideas drawn from these contexts helped to make a ‘space’ for the missing modality of aroma within the Responsive Ecologies lab’s larger emphasis on tangible, embodied, sensory, and environmentally ‘responsive’ approaches to teaching, learning, research, and research prototype fabrication.
A materials-centred focus
Raw materials used to teach the public about scent in Grasse, France, include two giant pieces of vetiver, passed around to visitors during tours.
The intentional choice of the word AROMA, rather than smell, is intended to distinguish the material orientation of the lab from environments that follow purely functional paradigms (olfaction/smell, etc), scientific study, or commercialisation. The term ‘aroma’ once referred not only to the scent of a raw material but also its source (i.e., spices, etc). In the case of ‘inquiry,’ this reflects the lab’s pedagogical orientation to inquiry-based learning, which is the kind of learning that is circulated in informal learning environments such as communities of practice rather than the more formal educational environments (classrooms, lecture theatres, or scientific labs) associated with particular academic disciplines (i.e., history, chemistry, biology, etc).
The naming of the Aroma Inquiry Lab is thus an explicit statement of purpose as an extra-disciplinary environment intended for internal research, learning, and knowledge mobilisation projects across varied fields of academic and cultural practice. This reflects a more general purpose to provide a location in which researchers can safely explore the tangible affordances of aromatic materials, objects, and environments as modal resources for learning, communicating, and knowledge dissemination from a variety of perspectives.
Infrastructure
Full body safety wash station.
While the aroma lab is not designed for purposes of commercial manufacturing or business operations, it features a research-informed and purpose-built infrastructure that includes the types of features and affordances required for practices involving chemical mixtures. This includes a full-body safety wash station, several mobile eye wash stations, targeted ventilation, flammable materials safes, downdraft tables, locking cabinets and drawers, a dedicated dishwasher (used only with aroma materials), a dedicated refrigerator with a locking system (used only for aroma materials), and WHMIS labelling for materials.
While my role as operator of the aroma lab’s infrastructure is not a full-time occupation, my labour maintaining the lab is supported indirectly through the in-kind support for my research activities and collaborations on knowledge mobilisation projects with internal and external researchers, industry partners, artists, and public institutions. While the majority of material resources in the lab consist of my own resources and archival materials, I also manage small collections of materials that are provided by collaborating researchers and knowledge mobilisation partners for the creation of specialised workshops, learning and training standards, scent-themed research prototypes, and cultural heritage mediation.