# Temple City by I. Galimov

But clocks tick on, and season come and go,
The names of cities change, events retain
No witnesses, and memories and tears
May not be shared...
Unwanted and unsought,
The shades of loved ones shrink and slip away
And we recoil in horror from the thought
That they might reappear...
...We realize that we no longer know where lies the path
To that lone house, and run as in a dream,
Despairing, mute, to where it stood, and go! -
Discover that the walls, the things, the columns
Are different and strange, and that we too are strangers there...

Anna Akhmatova. Northern Elegies IV

# Space violating bodies by Bernard Tschumi

Part of Bernard Tschumi's Architecture and Disjunction describes the power of architecture on the bodies and the violence it therefore implies. The chapter Space violating bodies establishes the basis of such a postulate. However Tschumi does not elaborate on the political implications of such a control but rather attempts to distinguish a Dionysian dimension of architecture out of it.

Space Violating Bodies

But if bodies violate the purity of architectural spaces, one might rightly wonder about the reverse: the violence inflicted by narrow corridors on large crowds, the symbolic or physical violence of buildings on users. A word of warning: I do not wish to resurrect recent behaviorist architectural approaches. Instead, I wish simply to underline the mere existence of a physical presence and the fact that it begins quite innocently, in an imaginary sort of way.
The place your body inhabits is inscribed in your imagination, your unconscious, as a space of possible bliss. Or menace. What if you are forced to abandon your imaginary spatial markings? A torturer wants you, the victim, to regress, because he wants to demean his prey, to make you lose your identity as a subject. Suddenly you have no choice; running away is impossible. The rooms are too small or too big, the ceilings too low or too high. Violence exercised by and through space is spatial torture.
Take Palladio's Villa Rotonda. You walk through one of its axes, and as you cross the central space and reach its other side you find, instead of the hillside landscape, the steps of another Villa Rotonda, and another, and another, and another. The incessant repetition at first stimulates some strange desire, but soon becomes sadistic, impossible, violent.
Such discomforting spatial devices can take any form: the white anechoic chambers of sensory deprivation, the formless spaces leading to psychological destructuring. Steep and dangerous staircases, those corridors consciously made too narrow for crowds, introduce a radical shift from architecture as an object of contemplation to architecture as a perverse instrument of use. At the same time it must be stressed that the receiving subject -you or I- may wish to be subjected to such spatial aggression, just as you may go to a rock concert and stand close enough to the loudspeakers to sustain painful -but pleasurable- physical or psychic trauma. Places aimed at the cult of excessive sound only suggest places aimed at the cult of excessive space. The love of violence, after all, is an ancient pleasure.
Why has architectural theory regularly refused to acknowlege such pleasures and always claimed (at least officially) that architecture should be pleasing to the eye, as well as comfortable to the body? This presupposition seems curious when the pleasure of violence can be experienced in every other human activity, from the violence of discordant sounds in music to the clash of bodies in sports, from gangster movies to the Marquis de Sade.

Violence Ritualized

Who will mastermind these exquisite spatial delights, these disturbing architectural tortures, the tortuous paths of promenades through delirious landscapes, theatrical events where actor complements decor? Who...? The architect? By the seventeenth century, Bernini had staged whole spectacles followed by Mansart's fetes for Louis XIV and Albert Speer's sinister and beautiful rallies. After all, the original action, the original act of violence -this unspeakable copulation of live body and dead stone- is unique and unrehearsed, though perhaps infinitely repeatable, for you may enter the building again and again. The architect will always dream of purifying this uncontrolled violence, channeling obedient bodies along predictable paths and ocasionally along ramps that provide striking vistas, ritualizing the transgression of bodies in space. Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center, with its ramp that violates the building, is a genuine movement of bodies made into an architectural solid. Or the reverse: it is a solid that forcibly channels the movement of bodies.
The original, spontaneous interaction of the body with a space is often purified by ritual. Sixteenth-century pageants and Nathan Altman's reenactment of the storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, for example, are ritualistic imitation of spontaneous violence. Endlessly repeated, these rituals curb all aspects of the original act that have escaped control: the choice of time and place, the selection of the victim...
A ritual implies a near-frozen relationship between action and space. It institutes a new order after the disorder of the original event. When it becomes necessary to mediate tension and fix it by custom, then no single fragment must escape attention. Nothing strange and unexpected must happen. Control must be absolute.

Bernard Tschumi. Architecture and Disjunction. The MIT Press. 1996

# Article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention

The Article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention (1949) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, describe the state of Israel's support to colonization as a violation of International War Law:

Art. 49. Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

To read the four Geneva Conventions and their three additional protocols (which are not all ratified by every nations of the world. see map here) you can visit The International Committee of the Red Cross' website

# (UN)WALL /// Plug-in Berlin by Etienne Boulanger

Our good friend Alexandre Pachiaudi is currently releasing on his blog Archiact, an excellent series of post about French artist Etienne Boulanger's work. Several of his projects could be appropriate for this (UN)WALL theme but the "performance" Plug-in Berlin drew my attention even more than the others. Between 2001 and 2003, he reproduced what Georges Orwell did in 1929 and described in his Down and Out in Paris and London, which is a voluntary choice for a temporary precarious life. During those two years, Etienne Boulanger built several shelters "into" walls providing thus a perfect camouflage of his presence:

"The time of occupation of each space is undetermined and varies depending on unpredictable external events (degradation, police, neighborhood). After having been inhabited, each shelter is abandoned as such on site. In two years, I used 17 interstices as shelters and 21 disused spaces as logistic support. This fragmentation of my environment generates a continuous moving through the city, close from nomadism. This experience of voluntary precarious life goes beyond the conventional field of art and the simple production of objects. The two years "performance" introduces the work in a political, urbanistic and social context which is necessary to a work that is directly inspired by contemporary society."

original text:
"Le temps d’occupation de chaque espace est indéterminé et varie en fonction d’évènements extérieurs imprévisibles (dégradations, police, voisinage). Après avoir été habitée, chaque construction est abandonnée et laissée sur place en l’état. En deux ans, 17 interstices me servirent d’abris et 21 espaces désaffectés, de support logistique. Cette fragmentation de mon environnement quotidien génère un déplacement constant à travers la ville, proche du nomadisme. Cette expérience de précarisation volontaire de mes conditions de vie dépassele champ conventionnel de l’art et la simple production d’objets. La “performance” de deux ans place l’oeuvre dans un contexte politique, urbanistique et social nécessaire à un travail ancré dans notre société contemporaine."

# Guantanamo / An Architektur about Giorgio Agamben and the Camps

picture extracted from the 2006 film The Road to Guantanamo by Mat Whitecross

It's been one year and half that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States, and although one of his very first proposition was to close Guantanamo, it seems that nobody is too much in a hurry to find a way to deal with people whose majority has not been proven to be guilty of anything.
Anyway, Guantanamo as a materialization of what Giorgio Agamben calls the state of exception is compelling for the importance of architecture to that matter. In the excellent book Territories. Islands, camps and other states of utopia, the German group An Architektur (see previous post) writes a very interesting article about Agamben and the notion of camp:

The number of people detained at Camp Delta now runs to 650. Their status is neither that of prisoners of war nor that of civilians. The US has skirted the Geneva Convention and international law by arbitrarily designating the prisoners as "Unlawful Enemy Combatants," to whom constitutional rights do not apply. The prisoners have no right to legal representation or to due process, and they can be detained indefinitely without concrete charges being filed. Guantanamo Bay's special judicial-spatial status allows the US to redefine and reinterpret laws as it sees fit. Guantanamo is a space whose conventional military significance has declined but which still serves the strategic interests of the US. There, a parallel legal system for suspected terrorists has been created, which was originally site-specific, but which is meanwhile also being applied outside of this unique territory.

Giorgio Agamben: The State of Emergency and the Notion of the Camp

Reflection is needed about the paradoxical status of the detainment camp in its quality as an exceptional space. It is part of a territory which stands outside the normal rule of law but which is not therefore an external space. What is excluded there [...] is actually included by virtue of its own exclusion. The state of emergency is what, above all else, is captured in the order of the camp. The right to declare a state of emergency is the basis of sovereign authority, and a camp is the structure that realizes a state of emergency in its most permanent form.

Giorgio Agamben. Means without End

Guantanamo Bay's shifting significance within a changing political order becomes apparent, when one considers Giorgio Agamben's investigations into the relationship between sovereignty, states of emergency and camps. Agamben offers a precise analysis of the new political space that opens up, when the political system of a nation state is beset by crisis, exploring the evolutions of various functions of power. In times of crisis, the relationship between sovereignty and territory, as well as the connection between law and space, are redefined. The previous structure of the nation-state, which is based on the functional coalescence of three elements (the laws of state, the territory in question and the membership of citizens in a given nation) begins to dissolve. Proceeding from his investigation of this process, Agamben develops a model of poer that unites judicial-institutional (sovereignty and state) with bio-political (corporeal punishment) aspects. The crucial connection is the constitutive conjunction of the estate of emergency as a legal category and the camp as its spatial manifestation.
The basis of the power of state is the capacity to decide whether to declare a state of emergency i.e. to temporarily suspend the rule of law. The decision affects both the binding legal system and its suspension. As part of the sovereign authority's decision-making capacity, the suspension of law, the state of emergency, is an inherent part of the legal order. Not only is lawlessness inherent in the legal system; the former is a precondition of the latter. However, as an abstract legal dimension, a state of emergency also needs a space in which it becomes concrete. For Agamben, this is the function of the camp. In the camp, the state of emergency, which was originally a temporary suspension of the legal system, gets a permanent spatial location. Camps are exceptional areas within a territory which fall outside the jurisdiction of law. Moreover, the camp is the place, where the bio-political dimension of sovereign power denying the detainee -for example in refugee or detention camps- all legal and political status, the state reduces them to complete judicial arbitrariness and absolute state power. By showing how a temporary or spatially limited state of how a new law is created from the lawlessness of the camp. The camp is a kind of catalyst, which transforms the suspension of law into a new, permanent, spatial and legal order.
[...]
Guantanamo is an example of how a political system no longer orders legal norms and practices within a concrete territory, but rather applies ex-territoriality as a constitutive element in the maintenance of its own power. Ex-territoriality as a spatial category refers to places which are located outside of a state's borders and its legal system, but which are nonetheless under the control of its sovereign authority. The suspension of law is transformed there from a provisional measure into a permanent technique of rule. The increase in power of the executive, which exercises sovereign authority, not only leads to the loss of the absence of rights into the constitutive element of the new legal order. The state of emergency, which is manifested in various forms of ex-territoriality, becomes the new regulator of the system. It takes its place along side the state, territory and the nation as the fourth element of the political order.

Oliver Clemens, Jesko Fezer, Kim Forster, Sabine Horlitz (AN ARCHITEKTUR). for Territories. Islands, camps and other states of utopia. KW 2003

# Biblioteca Publica de Mexico by Alberto Kalach

In the first post of Crab Studio's (see previous post) new blog, Peter Cook evokes the existence of the incredible building that is the Biblioteca Publica of Mexico City by Alberto Kalach. This Mexican Architect seems to have succeed to create a library influenced by both Borges' fantastic atmosphere and Kafka's ambiguous and intriguing fascination for bureaucracy.
The beautiful pictures from Tomás Casademunt succeeds to reinforce in an incredible way this feeling.

# (UN)WALL /// Dante Ferreri in La Periferia Domestica

La Periferia Domestica who is still following our theme of (UN)WALL just posted this amazing work of Dante Ferreri for Venice's Biennale 2007.

# House with Balls by Matharoo Associates

House with Balls is a house built outside Ahmedabad (see the previous posts about this city of Gujarat where Corbu, L.Kahn and B.Fuller have built) and designed by Matharoo Associates. Its name refers to the numerous concrete counterweights that open and close the heavy curtains which form the side wall of the house. Counterweights are always interesting to me in the continuous equilibrium they tend to achieve, thus creating a poetic suspension state that allows two heavy forces to acquire lightness.

thanks Martin!

# Relationship between engineering and architecture / interview by Francesco Cingolani

Francesco Cingolani is one of the associate of CTRLZ architectures we already published here; he also works for Hugh Dutton Associes in Paris and take part of the blog Complexitys related to this office. He recently asked me to answer to a short interview concerning the relationship between engineering and architecture. The original version in French follows the translated one.
(nb there are four other interviews on Complexitys with people coming from very various backgrounds)

Francesco Cingolani: In your vision, what is the relationship between architecture and engineering?

Léopold Lambert: In order to answer to this question, it is important to define what we understand by engineering. If I define here engineering as the discipline that tend to rationalize, diagrammatize, optimize space so then, in my vision, architecture has to try to evolve to the opposite side of this discipline.
Of course, architects would always have to do concessions to technocracy, however to resist to it -and probably resist it with its own language, its own symbols- seems to me as a important attitude.
Last week, one of my teachers, Catherine Ingraham, was evoking the hypothesis that English architects might have an important part of their education dedicated to engineering for reasons that were relative to colonization. In fact, she had the intuition that such an association of architecture and engineering had for goal to materialize and organize in an optimal way the English presence in colonized land. To associate this way Norman Foster and the colonial Bombay's organization is certainly a bold thing to do, nevertheless, even if this hypothesis would be proved to be wrong, I remain convinced that when architecture and engineering are too closely associated, it leads to a space of control. Obviously, I speak here of disciplines in their definitions; by no means I would like to praise architects and speak out against engineers. Actually the important word here is the notion of control. I like this word because it is not connoted and can thus develop an interesting ambiguity. It is not about completely refuse control and engineering, at least for some obvious physical issues; what, in my opinion, should be done is to resist a transcendental absolute control whether the latter comes from the architect or the encompassing institutional system.

FC: We are in an era of great changes: how do you imagine the architect of the future?

LL: I am a bit cautious about this attitude that consist in considering the present era as special. I think we have to work to gather all the circumstances that would make it become this way, but I don't feel it is really the case right now. What I see hidden behind this question is the question of the "green" architecture, but once again, I am cautious about his unique thought that acts like a new religious moral that capitalism did not have too much problem to appropriate.

FC: Nowadays, digital technologies multiply our possibilities and our conception tools: in your job what is your relationship with this complexity that seems to characterize the contemporary world?

LL: I just wrote a short paper for Pratt's journal that illustrate how parametric design allows us to physically access to the spatial complexity depicted in Jorge Luis Borges' short stories.
Previously, the labyrinth was described in two dimensions and was thus controlled in a transcendental way by its author. Borges, by introducing chance and infinite as generative elements of a space, invented uncontrollable architecture in which everybody can get lost.
Those literary spaces, we can now generates them with the help of computation. Using scientific terminology, architecture mostly belongs to the world of physics. Computer allows it to enter in the world of mathematics, and thus, as far as Borges is concerned, to investigate notions of randomness and infinite.
To make an architecture dependent on an equation is yet a vertiginous thing and that is why too many architects and students let themselves go towards a tool idolatry, what we could call an ergaleiophilie (ergaleio in greek means the tool). One should thus use this tool for goals that are external of itself.

original version:
Francesco Cingolani: Quel est, dans ta vision, le rapport entre l’architecture et l’ingénierie?

Léopold Lambert: Afin de répondre a cette question, il convient de définir ce que l’on entend par ingénierie. Si je définis ici l’ingénierie comme la discipline qui tente à rationaliser, diagrammatiser, optimiser l’espace alors, dans ma vision, l’architecture se doit de tenter d’évoluer a l’opposé de cette discipline.

Bien sûr, les architectes auront sans doute toujours à faire des concessions a la technocratie, néanmoins, lui résister –et sans doute lui résister avec son propre langage, ses propres symboles- me semble être une attitude libératrice.Une de mes professeurs, Catherine Ingraham, la semaine dernière, évoquait l’hypothèse selon laquelle les architectes anglais avaient une formation approfondie en ingénierie dont les raisons dataient de la colonisation. En effet, elle avait l’intuition qu’une telle association de l’architecture et de l’ingénierie avait pour but de matérialiser et organiser de manière optimale la présence anglaise en terres colonisée. Associer de la sorte Norman Foster et l’aménagement du Bombay colonial est certes une chose audacieuse mais quand bien même cette hypothèse se révélerait fausse pour une raison ou pour une autre, je reste persuadé que l’architecture et l’ingénierie lorsqu’associées de trop près mènent inexorablement a un espace de contrôle. Bien évidemment, je parle ici de disciplines dans leurs définitions, il ne s’agit en aucun cas de faire l’apologie des architectes et de conspuer les ingénieurs. D’ailleurs, le mot important ici, est la notion de contrôle. J’aime ce mot car il n’est pas connoté et peut donc ainsi développer une ambigüité intéressante. Il ne s’agit pas de refuser le contrôle et l’ingénierie, ne serait-ce que pour des problèmes évidents de physique ; ce qui selon moi convient de faire, est de résister a un contrôle transcendantal absolu que celui-ci provienne de l’architecte ou du système institutionnel environnant.

FC: Nous sommes dans un moment de grands changements: comment imagines-tu la figure de l’architecte dans le futur?

LL: Je me méfie un peu de cette attitude qui consiste à considérer la période présente comme spéciale. Je pense qu’il faut œuvrer à réunir toutes les circonstances pour qu’elle le devienne mais je n’ai pas le sentiment que cela soit le cas en ce moment. Ce que je vois caché derrière cette question est la question de l’architecture « verte » mais là encore, je me méfie de cette pensée unique qui agit comme une nouvelle morale a tendance franchement religieuse que le capitalisme n’a pas eu trop de mal a s’approprier.

FC: Aujourd’hui, les technologies numériques multiplient nos possibilités ainsi que les outils de conception: dans ta profession, quel est ton rapport à cette complexité qui semble caractériser le monde contemporain?

LL: Je viens d’écrire un court papier pour le journal de Pratt qui raconte comment le design paramétrique nous permet d’accéder physiquement à la complexité spatiale décrite dans les nouvelles de Jorge Luis Borges.
Auparavant, le labyrinthe était décrit en deux dimensions et était ainsi contrôlé de manière transcendantale par son auteur. Borges, en introduisant le hasard et l’infini comme éléments générateurs d’un espace a inventé des architectures incontrôlables au sein desquelles, chacun peut se perdre.
Ces espaces littéraires nous pouvons désormais les générer à l’aide de la computation. En termes scientifiques, l’architecture appartient plutôt au monde la physique. L’ordinateur lui permet d’entrer dans le monde des mathématiques, et ainsi, en ce qui concerne Borges, d’envisager les notions d’aléatoire et d’infini.
Faire dépendre une architecture d’une équation est cependant quelque chose de vertigineux et c’est aussi pourquoi trop d’architectes ou d’étudiants en architecture se laisse aller à une idolâtrie de l’outil, ce que l’on pourrait appeler une ergaleiophilie (ergaleio en grec désigne l’instrument) aigue ! Il s’agit donc de se servir de cet outil à des fins qui lui sont extérieures.

# Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago

This building must be very well known by people who live in Chicago, but until yesterday I never heard about it. Designed in 1975 by Harry Weese's office, the Metropolitan Correctional Center is a vertical prison in the very center of Chicago. The buildings definitely uses a feudal vocabulary of dungeon but is also striking by its discretion that makes it be easy to confused with an average office building. (the corollary is probably also true)

# MANIFESTO /// Usman Haque

Usman Haque

In the last year or so I've become once again very interested in non-monetary economies (1) and, more specifically, in twisting prisoner's dilemma (2) for useful and practical outcomes. This means I've been looking at cooperative systems and altruism (in an economic sense (3)) and how offering the option to be non-altruistic has, anecdotally, often seemed to be more successful in encouraging altruistic behaviour than systems in which the only other option is to *opt out*. Our consumption (and creation) of energy is of course particularly poignant in these kinds of system.

More specifically, with respect to conversations and 'debate' around climate change and the environmental crisis, I've become particularly interested in how members of the public can themselves contribute to the evidence gathering process; how people can convince themselves of what's going on, so that they don't have to rely on merely selecting which authority figure (scientist, religious leader, politician) to believe -- they all disagree on major and minor points anyway. I want to find ways to encourage people to learn to question the standards of evidence that are thrust upon them. When authoritative sources cannot be trusted, then citizen-led data acquisition/collection/creation/crafting is the only means of making sense of a situation.(4)

This kind of engagement is vital for us (i.e. humanity) to make sense of our situation, and is essential if any solutions are to be found -- Science (note the capital letter) is not the only arbiter of truth, nor is it the only framework for empirical analysis. We are all -- scientists, non-scientists, artists, non-artists (much as I hate those false-dichotomies - but I think that covers everybody, right?) -- in it together. (5)

The point is that there is no easy solution. We (designers, architects, and other pseudo-experts) have got to stop trying to sell people the idea that there are simple and obvious ways to deal with the kinds of complex systems that govern both our social and environmental lives. These things are *not* simple and obvious. If we say they are, then we imply that people who don't do them are stupid -- which is clearly not the case.

It is often said that it is the task of designers to "make things simple for people" - which I find patronising and counter-productive. If anything it is the task of designers to show how *complex* things are, and to help build tools for dealing with that complexity... *not* just simplifying it (which is the basic function of the perceptual systems we are endowed with, so it's definitely possible!).

This approach has manifested itself in a few recent projects which give clues as to how these vague and abstract notions turn into actual projects (6). As it happens though, most of the projects are not yet published online because we're a little too busy developing them.....

What has this got to do with architecture? Well, like all my previous work it has to do with the way we relate to each other, and the way we relate to the spaces around us - and that for me is exactly what architecture is about.

..................


(1) In the mid-nineties I co-founded an online currency portal called the Global Village Bank, that was meant to operate outside of conventional monetary systems. Unsurprisingly, (uh... due to timing?), it went nowhere.

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist)

(4) Part of the reason why I launched http://www.pachube.com/

(5) Many of the thoughts expressed here have clearly been subtly (and unsubtly) influenced by conversations with Natalie Jeremijenko - http://www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/

(6) For example Natural Fuse: http://www.haque.co.uk/naturalfuse.php

# Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari's Holey Space

Holey Space [espace troue]: the 'third space' of the machinic phylum (of matter-flow), inhabited by itinerant mettalurgists, and by extension the 'underground' space that can connect with smooth space and be conjugated by striated space. Holey space is the subsoil space of 'swiss cheese' that bypasses both the ground [sol] of nomadic smooth space and the land [terre] of sedentary striated space. In this bypassing, holey space is suspect; for Gilles Deleuze, the mark of Cain is not the biblical mark of the soild, but a mark of the subsoil [sous-sol], since holey space is conceived of by surface dwellers as created by theft and betrayal.
Holey space has different relations to nomadic smooth and State striated space. Cave-dwelling, earth-boring tunnellers are only imperfecty controlled by the State, and often have allied with nomads and with peasants in revolts against centralized authority. Thus the machinic phylum explored in holey space connects with smooth space to form rhizomes, while it is conjugated (blocked) by State striation. The previously positive relation of holey and smooth space has turned around, however, now that States are able to create a smooth space of surveillance and global military interevention. Holey spaces have flourished for the only way to escape the spying eyes of State intelligence is to go underground: 'Do not new smooth spaces, or holey spaces, arise as parries even in relation to the smooth space of a worldwide organization? Virilio invokes the beginnings of subterranean habitation in the "mineral layer", which can take on very diverse values. Such a turnaround has not gone unnoticed; led by the Bush Administration, global States now trumpet the danger of 'rogue regimes' that have taken their weapons-making capabilities underground where they cannot be detected by satellites and spy planes. North Korea in 2003 remains the prime example, but much of the premise upon which the Bush Administration built its case for the 2003 'pre-emptive' assault on Iraq was the supposedly concealed nature of weapons laboratories and storage facilities. The post 9/11 Afghanistan war was also launched against the holey space of the so-called 'Al Qaeda' network, supposedly in possession of innumerable underground hideouts, indeed even elaborate bunkers (though these were discovered to be not nearly as luxurious as their reputations). The bunkers and tunnels of the American establishment are, of course, exempt from any suspicion.
Cyberspace and forest space may also be seen as holey spaces rather than as smooth spaces in that they provide protective cover for 'underground' operations. Guerrilla armies such as the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) use forests to great advantage, and indeed a long line of guerrilla forces in Latin American has used rain forests in this way. The armies of the State cannort array on it as on a battlefield, and the trees must be defoliated before air war can be successful. Cyberspace is filled with gaps and voids, black matter from which hackers (these may of course be in the service of States) launch coordinated attacks on sites and servers. A study of the paranoid tunneling in Cold War suburban backyards to create 'fallout shelters' would yield yet another aspect of the interrelations of smooth, striate, and holey space, as would the innumerable urban legends concerning sewers, subway tunnels, and the like.

Deleuze and geophilosophy: a guide and glossary by. Mark Bonta and John Protevi. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004