Designing Familiarity: How Multisensory VR Shapes Emotional Presence

This is the question at the heart of a master’s project at Politecnico di Milano, exploring how scent-enabled VR can deepen emotional presence and spatial memory. Starting from a personal experience of travel anxiety, the project grew into a full multisensory journey through Milan, where smell, sound, and movement work together to create a sense of familiarity before arrival.

From olfactory mapping inspired by Kevin Lynch’s city theories to Arduino-based scent triggers synchronized with Unity interactions, the project shows how intentional sensory design can reduce uncertainty and support emotional orientation, not just in virtual cities but also in real ones like airports.

Read the full article on Medium to explore how multisensory design is reshaping what it means to truly feel a place.