The Smells of Expansion and Contraction

wrinkled tesseracts

In the contemporary parlance of computer security, this is called a "zero day exploit": Olfaction is the back door to our un-thinking mind, and big business knows this.

Smells can represent spatiality to us, and unconsciously direct our decision-making. This can be used to the advantage of 'retail sales' by using clever olfactory design of sales spaces to "trick" our emotionally-reined limbic system.

Using a scent reminiscent of enclosed spaces, like the smell of firewood, and a scent evoking open spaces, like the seashore, scientists found benefit in augmenting retail spaces with their complementary smells.

American Journal of Business via phys.org

It is interesting to think that space itself can be distinguished by its smell, but on second thought, of course it can. Half of smell is place. That is to say, the hippocampus, or "place" part of the brain, plays a critical role in smell/memory.

Closed spaces and open spaces both affect us psychologically, and the co-located smells of those places would do so as well.