Activist and MacArthur Award winner Majora Carter has developed a new fragrance, L'Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud, and wants to use it to scent the hallways and public areas of the Saint Thomas apartments in the Bronx:
The celebrated founder of Sustainable South Bronx partnered with Parisian perfumer Pascal Gaurin, creator of Vera Wang for Men, and Bruno Jovanovic, who has concocted perfumes for Lagerfeld, Armani and Donna Karan, to create the fragrance.
She boasts it is an essence of grass, rain and citrus.
[...] The building is within the smell zone of a noxious sewage treatment plant and a trash transfer station.
Read more at Green guru Majora Carter plans to pump new perfume into Hunts Point apartment building at the NY Daily News.
my first thought , having read only the very first few sentences, was Oiy! scenting public areas is not a good idea! then I read the sewage treatment plant and trash transfer station part and decided anything would be better than that! Maybe they need those fragrance guns like around the trash heaps in China….. (so glad I live in a fresh rural area!)
Hard to say if “anything would be better” if you had serious asthma. Sounds like a well-intentioned but very bad idea to me…
You know, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to have serious asthma….there would be no place to get away from one trigger or another…..country or urban: different sets of nasties but nasties all the same. Puts my annoying seasonal itchy nose and eyes allergies in a whole different light…I’ll make sure I temper my complaining about “oh, this darn itchy nose!” from now on!
I agree with well-intentioned but bad.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that they’ll end up with a green citrus fragrance floating over base notes of sewage and rotting trash. Trying to cover up stink usually doesn’t work very well.
And there you have the next fragrance release from CdG!
LOL!
Your description sort of reminds me of my impression of the new Prada Vetiver LOL 😉
LOL!
It is nice that the perfumers helped with this (and assume it was done for charity) but seems ill-advised to pipe it through a whole apartment building, even if only in the public areas. Seems more sensible to give a bottle of room spray to people who want one.
Can’t help but contrast this project with Sissel Tolaas’ ongoing effort in Mexico City. Rather than the top-down, let’s-help-the-poor-folks feel of this project, hers is ground up, let’s-face-the-stink-together. For six years she’s been visiting different neighborhoods in Mexico City and asking residents to direct her to the source of the neighborhood’s worst smells. Sometimes its a factory, or a dump, sometimes its the smell of their own cars. Using headspace technology she creates a “perfume” that is the essence of the stink, then returns to the neighborhood to conduct video interviews where residents smell and react to the tangible embodiment of something that is normally a backdrop to their lives. The resulting scents, scent map, and video have become a travelling display that’s used to raise awareness and (hopefully) influence policy in Mexico City and beyond.
wow, sweetlife, that sounds so incredibly cool. i am going to look this up. it’s projects like this that really make me feel inspired.
i know Ms. Carter and the perfumers have really good intentions, but as everyone commented above, there is probably better ways to approach this issue.
Harvard’s architecture school gave her a big award for this project last year at a conference on sustainable architecture and design–you may be able to find info and pictures on their website.
And here’s a link to her talk at TED, which is how I first heard of her:
http://www.ted.com/speakers/majora_carter.html
Oops. not actually sure if you were talking about ST or MC.
That does sound like an interesting project (and ST does so many cool conceptual things with smell), but have mixed feelings about comparing them…this is an attempt to do some immediate and simple to solve a problem.
I see your point, R., but I still wonder how much input the folks who live there had in the process. I am uncomfortable in general with fragrance as a way to “cover over” stink, and here it has particularly unfortunate class connotations, no matter how well-intentioned.
Then again, for all I know the residents are applauding the change…
OK, went and read the article (duh! sorry) and it sounds like they had nil input, and are simply being asked for their permission at the end of the process.
I guess I would have preferred the perfumer to do something like capture the odor and set off a stinkbomb in the mayor’s office and at the city council meeting. A girl can dream… 😉
A, no no, I agree…I think this is misguided. Just meant not sure it compares to what ST is doing…it’s not meant to be conceptual, just to solve a problem. I think it’s a bad way to solve the problem, but what ST is doing (and I didn’t read about that, LOL!!) sounds interesting but not necessarily helpful, you know?
What is a MacArthur award? Also, I bet St Thomas is thrilled by the fact they are naming the stinkiest buildings after him.
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.959463/k.9D7D/Fellows_Program.htm
I recall being at the Parsons event when this was unveiled and it seemed rather nice, tho Chandler Burr really didn’t like it at all. We were not smelling it on top of other difficult smells tho —
For some reason it is cracking me up that Burr did not like it…I mean, I’m not sure that to serve its purpose it needs to be approved by a critic, you know?
In a South Bronx project but for the grace of god live we.
I have such respect for MacArthur winners. This may very well be an okay idea… who knows.
I just think giving it a French name sounds silly… especially the “Bronx du Sud” part. Ay yi yi.
Ha! Agreed, Joe! And thanks for putting your finger on part of what was making me squirm.
Yeah, the name seemed either unnecessarily pretentious, or rather condescending.
I know I didn’t get the image they were going for with the name, though. . . . South Bronx Green Water conjured up algae and scum in a stagnant industrial overflow. Given the context.
I have learned (the hard way) that “covering up” a scent hardly ever works. Ever know anyone who over-applies perfume to cover up cigarette smoke? Or tried to cover up “eau de pet” with room freshener? And then the cover-up just reminds you of the original bad smell,… I think this is well-intentioned, but misguided.