DSM-Firmenich turns design into scent—and rethinks perfume’s role

Our first impression of an object is usually shaped by sight and touch. For a long time, scent in this setting remained an addition: an atmosphere around an exhibition, a shop or an object. In DSM-Firmenich’s research practices, it is offered a different role—to become an autonomous material, involved in making a work alongside colour, volume and light.

For several years, the company has brought perfumers, designers and artists together in shared work. Their task is not simply to render a painting or object in scent. It is a meeting of different languages: a visual idea may become the starting point for a composition, while a fragrance can alter how a viewer experiences a space, a material or the maker’s gesture.

This approach matters to perfumery because it releases fragrance from its familiar role as something in a bottle or a personal accessory. Scent can function as part of an installation, an architectural experience or a design object: not illustrating what is seen, but creating a distinct layer of meaning.

For visitors, this changes the way they experience a work as well. A visual image keeps its distance: it can be viewed from afar. Scent, however, cannot be held at arm’s length—it unfolds over time, mingles with the air and remains in memory differently from colour or outline.

That is the most compelling aspect of DSM-Firmenich’s project: design is not given a ready-made olfactory accompaniment. Instead, it becomes a reason to reconsider what fragrance can do in art and why it is worth seeing not only as a product, but as an expressive material.

Such experiments do not promise to transform perfume-shop shelves overnight. But they expand the vocabulary available to fragrance creators: a composition may begin not with a note or a raw material, but with a surface, movement, light or the sensation of an object.