by Kate McLean, artist and smell map designer

Every hospital has a particular smell, and much like every city these smellscapes comprise a specific combination of odours. This project explores how the NHS hospital might be conceived and understood through its smellscape alone. Interactions of people, cleaning and clinical equipment and residual food and drink make for a contingent, intense and pervasive corridor smellscape. 

The virtual map requires you to use your imagination to conjure the smells: from the weak and insipid coffee floating near the hospital canteen to the many bodies in the busy entrance halls; from the metallic odours of stale blood emanating from the operating theatre to the sweaty, sticky, stale pong of the waiting room. 

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