Smooth/Striated Space

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish smooth and striated space as contrasting spatial logics. Striated space is organized, gridded, and hierarchical—typified by the city, the map, the metric. Smooth space is open, continuous, and intensive—like the desert, the sea, or nomadic trajectories. Yet these are not binaries but interpenetrating modes, as smoothness is continually striated and striation continually smoothed. In landscape and architecture, the concept reframes design as oscillation between control and openness. Smooth/striated space is less classification than process, a tension structuring how spaces are lived and produced.

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