Scent and coloured lights could be used to reduce aggression in city streets, according to a crowd-behaviour expert who spoke at Dezeen's talk about design and terrorism at Dutch Design Week 2017.
LED lamps that can be varied in colour and intensity are already being used in a busy nightlife district in Eindhoven, and the Dutch city is now experimenting with mood-changing aromas that could calm agitated crowds.
"We are starting to use smell to see how we can influence the behaviour of people," said Tinus Kanters, project manager at the Dutch Institute for Technology, Safety and Security.
Speaking at Dezeen's Good Design for a Bad World talks series in Eindhoven in October, Kanters said that trials had already shown the calming affect aromas can have on individuals. "We did some tests with the smell of oranges with people who were arrested," he said. "You can see that people who are arrested took less medicines to calm down. So you can see that it influenced [their] state of mind."
Using light to change the behaviour of crowds
Kanters is involved in Stratumseind ??Living Lab, a project investigating ways of improving public safety in Stratumseind, a 250-metre-long street lined with bars and clubs in Eindhoven.
The project, a collaboration between Dutch electronics brand Philips and the Intelligent Lighting Institute at Technical University Eindhoven, is believed to be the first of its kind in the world.
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