This paper discusses the development of a smell-based architecture exhibition driven by the understanding of local materials and processes. Exploration of smell in space often focuses on how smell is produced through activities happening in space, seeing space as a conditioned environment that controls the resulting smell. Instead, this study would like to address how the fluidity of smell produced by material transformation may reflect the connection between material and context. The produced smell traverses across spatial and temporal boundaries, creating rich spatial experiences that reflect specific narratives of contextuality. The smell-based architecture exhibition titled Smelling Indonesia utilizes local herbs and spices as the smell ingredients. It identifies local techniques of transforming the ingredients to create smells with differing intensities. Such explorations highlight the layered intensities of smell and how it influences the gestures and body movements used to navigate space. The exhibition presents an architectural proposition for designing exhibition space based on smell, creating spatial trajectories based on bodily responses toward the position of smell materials and smell mediums. Exploration of smell-based exhibition space driven by local material contributes to design methodologies that celebrate the intangible and contingent qualities of space based on society’s cultural and material knowledge. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.