In recent years, a little-known research group named Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Beyond shedding new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, Forensic Architecture has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. In Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, provides, for the first time, an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of this practice. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Included in this volume are case studies that traverse multiple scales and durations, ranging from the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere. Weizman’s Forensic Architecture, stunning and shocking in its critical narrative, powerful images, and daring investigations, presents a new form of public truth, technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically produced. Their practice calls for a transformative politics in which architecture as a field of knowledge and a mode of interpretation exposes and confronts ever-new forms of state violence and secrecy.

On the evening of 4 August 2011, Mark Duggan was shot and killed by the police in the north London neighborhood of Tottenham after the minicab in which he was traveling was pulled over by a team of undercover officers. The team had begun following Duggan shortly after receiving intelligence that he was in possession of a gun, and the officer who shot him testified that he had seen, for a "split second," Duggan aiming the gun at him after he had exited the minicab. However, the gun was not found next to Duggan's body on the pavement. According to the police, they discovered it in a patch of grass some seven meters away.After a coroner's inquest ruled Duggan's killing "lawful" and the police watchdog organization issued a report siding with the officers' version of events, the Duggan family's legal team commissioned Forensic Architecture to conduct an investigation into the critical question at the heart of the case: How did the gun end up in the grass? With no video footage of the shooting itself, Forensic Architecture had to rely primarily on the written and oral testimony of the officers involved to develop a spatial investigation designed to test the plausibility of the police's narrative and to examine whether the officers themselves could have planted the gun.In addition to detailing the methodologies employed and conclusions reached by Forensic Architecture, this volume offers a selection of the primary documents used for the investigation; an introduction by EyalWeizman, director of Forensic Architecture, analyzing the notions of "pre-emption" and "split-second decision making," which are often invoked to defend police killingsof Black people; a roundtable with scholar Adam Elliott-Cooper, activists Temi Mwale and Stafford Scott, and attorney Marcia Willis Stewart on the complex colonial and legal histories that have shaped the policing of Black Britons in the postwar era; and the transcript of a speech by Scott on the struggle for justice for those who have died as a result of racialized policing.

Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, state violence, environmental destruction and repressive technologies. At the same time, fields not usually associated with aesthetics make powerful use of it. Journalists and legal professionals pore over open source videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call "investigative aesthetics": mobilising sensibilities often associated with art, architecture and other such practices to find new ways of speaking truth to power. This book draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology, evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art, and examines radical practices such as those of Wikileaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Investigative Aesthetics takes place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new 'common sensing'. The book is an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today. To Nour Abuzaid for your brilliance, perseverance, and unshaken belief in the liberation of Palestine.

The role of material forensics in articulating new notions of the public truth of political struggle, violent conflict, and climate change are the focus of Forensis, the HKW exhibition catalog based on the theories of Eyal Weizman. - The concept of forensis was developed as a research project by Goldsmiths College, Centre for Research Architecture by theorist Eyal Weizman. The project is the subject of a major exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and catalog cum theoretical reader presenting the findings and contributions of over 20 influential architects, artists, filmmakers, and academics. Forensis, (Latin for pertaining to the forum ) argues for the role of material forensics as central to the interpretation of the ways in which states police and govern their subjects. Forensics engages struggles for justice across frontiers of contemporary conflict through the study of how technology mediates the testimony of material objects such as bones, ruins, toxic substances, etc. In the hopes of unlocking forensics potential as a political practice, the project participants present innovative investigations aimed at producing new kinds of evidence for use by international prosecutorial teams, political organizations, NGOs, and the UN.

Successfully Conduct and Report on Any Architectural Forensic Investigation Architectural Forensics clearly defines the role, responsibilities, and essential work of forensic architects. This unique resource offers comprehensive coverage of building defects and failures, types of failure mechanisms, and job-critical tasks such as fieldwork, lab testing, formulating opinions, and providing expert testimony. Packed with 300 illustrations, in-depth case studies, and numerous sample documents, this vital reference takes you step-by-step through every phase of conducting investigations...diagnosing building failures... preventing and curing building defects...and reporting on findings. The book also includes strategies for avoiding liability and resolving disputes-potentially saving vast amounts of time and money. Authoritative and up-to-date, Architectural Forensics Features: • Full details on conducting investigations and reporting on architectural forensics • Clear guidance on preventing and curing building defects and failures • In-depth coverage of field work, photogrammetry, and lab testing • Practical insights into litigation, dispute resolution, and expert testimony • Solid business advice on presentation methods, marketing, and setting up an office and website

Internationally renowned and award-winning historian Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt's The Evidence Room is a chilling exploration of the role architecture played in constructing Auschwitz - arguably the Nazis' most horrifying facility. The Evidence Room is both a companion piece to, and an elaboration of, an exhibit at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, based on van Pelt's authoritative testimony against Holocaust denial in a 2000 libel suit argued before the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

By investigating the sovereign claims of American power and the architectural spaces of secret prisons, Spaces of Disappearance reconstructs the network of black siteprisons developed in the early years of the so-called War on Terror. Jordan H. Carver compiles an original archive of architectural representations, redacted documents, and media reports to build a knowingly incomplete spatial history of post-9/11 extraordinary rendition. Framed by an introductory essay by architectural historian and theorist Felicity D. Scott that positions Carver's work withina longer history of military strategy andstate violence against "uncertain" warfare, this book skillfully presents the territorialand political logics of the top-secret CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Spaces of Disappearance shows how architectures of con nement were designed to deny prisoners their human subjectivity and describes how the spectacle of government bureaucracyis used as a substitute for accountability.