Forensic Architecture

On 6 November 1985, a guerrilla group known as M19 stormed the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, taking state officials and members of the Colombian Supreme Court hostage. Security forces initiated a counter-siege that lasted two days, leaving over a hundred dead and large parts of the building burned. Instead of focusing on what happened inside the Palace between the guerrillas and the military, a new visual investigation by FA and the Truth Commission examines the logistics of the military in their counterinsurgency operation and what happened to certain individuals once they left the building. -FA

Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside they are measurable objects, seen from within they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When ‘post-truth’ and denialism obscure acts of violence and compound the harm, we, the inhabitants of toxic clouds, must find new ways of resistance.

On April 6, 2006, Halit Yozgat was murdered by the National Socialist Underground at an Internet café in Kassel. State intelligence officer Andreas Temme was in the café around the same time. An architectural dissection of his police statement.

Since 2018, Forensic Architecture has been working with ‘synthetic images’-photorealistic digital renderings of 3D models-to train machine learning classifiers. Model Zoo includes a growing collection of 3D models of munitions and weapons, as well as the different classifiers trained to identify them making a catalogue of some of the most horrific weapons used in conflict today.

On December 20, 2019, Chilean security forces used unprecedented amounts of tear gas within a relatively small area against people participating in a peaceful and unarmed demonstration. Using open source analysis and fluid dynamic simulations, we measured the concentration of tear gas in the air in that territory to estimate the scale of health risks inflicted on civilians that day.

Return to al-Ma’in chronicles the multiyear collaboration between Forensic Architecture (FA) and Palestinian historian and Nakba survivor Salman Abu Sitta on the reconstruction of his birthplace, the lost village of Ma’in Abu Sitta (or al-Ma’in). Guided by the work and memories of Abu Sitta, FA-researchers reconstructed al-Ma’in’s occupation by Israeli forces on 14 May 1948, its subsequent demolition, and the settlements constructed on its ruins. The movie looks to the present moment and the connections between Israeli military’s conduct and appropriation of Palestinian land during and after 1948, and today in Gaza. The project looks back at the sophistication and sensitivity with which the Abu Sitta family cultivated their land, and the rich agricultural diversity that was lost when Israeli settlements were subsequently constructed over this landscape.

On the evening of 16 March 2017, a US drone strike targeted Sayidina Omar Ibn al-Khattab Mosque in al-Jinah, in Aleppo province, Syria. According to witnesses, the strike took place when close to three hundred people were in the building. Most were gathering for the night prayer, while others remained in the smaller ‘winter prayer hall’ where a religious seminar had just finished. The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, claimed to have recovered the bodies of thirty-eight civilians, including five children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported forty-two dead. -FA

The village of al-Araqib in the northern Naqab desert has been demolished over 170 times over the past sixty years. Israeli authorities argue that the village did not exist prior to the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, and that as such, the Bedouin villagers are trespassers, and their settlements illegal. Since 2015, Forensic Architecture has worked alongside the families of al-Araqib to provide historical and juridical evidence not only to support their own claims to their land, but on behalf of communities throughout the illegalised Palestinian Bedouin villages at the northern threshold of the Naqab desert. - FA

Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala was consumed by conflict between an increasingly militarized state and a widespread rural insurgency. The state's counterinsurgency efforts peaked in the late 1970s, when security forces pursued guerrillas into the country's highlands. According to a 1999 report by Guatemala's Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), a UN-backed body established toward the end of the conflict, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during more than three decades of violence. FA was commissioned by a Guatemalan NGO, the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), to support its efforts to gather evidence for the trial of the country's former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, whose brief military regime lasted from March 1982 to August 1983, and senior members of his security apparatus. Montt would eventually be convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.

On 17 October 2023, a devastating explosion took place in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. British-Palestinian doctor and distinguished reconstructive surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was working at Ahli Hospital at the time of the blast. In April 2024, Forensic Architecture (FA) began working with Dr Abu-Sittah to reconstruct the events of the night as he experienced them. Using an interview practice called ‘situated testimony’, FA worked with Dr Abu-Sittah to retrace his steps through a 3D reconstruction of the hospital compound, in which FA had geolocated and ‘photomatched’ visual evidence recorded by survivors of the blast, including Dr Abu-Sittah himself, and journalists.

On 1 December 2018, on the margins of a gilets jaunes protest in Marseille, 80-year-old Zineb Redouane was struck in the face by a tear gas grenade as she was standing at the window of her fourth-floor apartment. The following day, she died in hospital. In May 2020, a new element was added to judicial investigation that was ongoing: the report of a ballistics expert, intended to establish whether the officer who fired the shot, a member of France’s CRS riot police, had followed procedure. The report clears the officer, who has still not been identified. Using elements of that report, and a detailed 3D model of the scene, Disclose and Forensic Architecture re-examined the case, reconstructing the precise sequence of events before, during, and after the killing.

Along the coastline of the Gaza Strip, beneath layers of rubble, lies one of Palestine’s hidden treasures and one of the region’s most important archaeological sites. Repeated bombings, and the humanitarian disaster inflicted on Palestinian communities by the decades-long Israeli occupation and siege, as well as advancing coastal erosion and necessary development within the enforced densification of Gaza, have placed this unique site under existential threat. -FA

In the early hours of 9 January 2009, a missile struck the Salha family’s home in Beit Lahiya, Gaza. Under the direction of Fayez and Noor, we constructed a digital model of their home, helping father and son to reconstruct the events of the night. -FA

In late summer of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces battled pro-Russian separatists for control of the town of Ilovaisk, in the border region of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. By September, the separatists had won a resounding victory, routing the retreating Ukrainian army. Even as the battle was ongoing, however, allegations swirled that regular units of the Russian army had joined the battle on the side of the separatists, tipping the balance decisively in their favour. Russia denied the charges. But, in what became a watershed moment for open source investigation, communities of researchers, reporters, and citizen journalists gathered substantial and compelling open source evidence for the presence of the Russian military in the region. This video is a documentary piece that ventures both into the realms of science and politics (it’s part of the body of evidence submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in the form of an interactive platform).

On 23 March 2025 in Tel al-Sultan, Gaza, Israeli forces massacred fifteen Palestinian aid workers travelling in clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, later burying their bodies and vehicles in a shallow mass grave. Earshot and Forensic Architecture worked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society and survivors of the massacre to reconstruct the incident with unprecedented precision. The Last Responders is an investigative documentary about this massacre. Anchored in the situated testimonies of two survivors, the film draws on firsthand video and voice recordings captured during the night of the attack by the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Through these materials, the film probes acts of execution and concealment, while reconstructing a fuller account of what unfolded in Tel al-Sultan in the hours and days that followed.

A stretch of the Mississippi River once called "Plantation Country" is now the "Petrochemical Corridor", known to those who breathe its toxic air as "Death Valley". Using advanced cartography and fluid dynamics techniques, we work to support local demands for liability and repair.

Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military close to the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides. Our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter? What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border? -FA

On July 14 2018, in Gaza City, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, two Palestinian teenagers climbed onto the rooftop of the al-Katibah building. A short time later the pair, Luai Kahil and Amir al-Nimrah, were killed by a missile fired from an Israeli aircraft. Forensic Architecture (FA) was commissioned by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem to investigate the circumstances of the boys’ death.

A stretch of the Mississippi River once called "Plantation Country" is now the "Petrochemical corridor", known to those who breathe its toxic air ad "Death Valley". Using advances techniques in cartography and fluid dynamics, FA worked to support local demands for accountability and reparations.

On 4 October 2010, a home on the outskirts of Mir Ali, North Waziristan, was struck by several missiles. The attack killed five people, including some who were suspected of involvement acts of terrorism. Together with the witness, we reconstructed a digital model of her house, according to her descriptions. This virtual environment then became a medium for testimony: by positioning the witness’ point-of-view within the digital model, we helped her to ‘walk’ through it as if it were her own house. In this way, this project saw the genesis of a new element of FA’s practice, a new mode of witness interviewing, that we call ‘situated testimony’. -FA

Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.

On the evening of 1 June 2018, a large group of Palestinian protesters gathered at one of the five principal protest sites, near the village of Khuzaa. At 6:31pm, a shot was fired from beyond the border fence into the crowd. The bullet killed Rouzan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer medic. Two of her fellow medics, Mohammed Shafee and Rami Abo Jazar, were wounded at the same time. The death of al-Najjar, who was widely revered among the protesters, sent shockwaves throughout Palestine. Forensic Architecture was commissioned by the New York Times to undertake spatial analysis of the scene of al-Najjar’s death. By digitally recreating the protest site from video evidence, we used the precise location of the three gunshot victims as a means to derive the trajectory of the bullet, and trace its ‘cone of fire’ back to its origin, a sniper’s berm at the border fence. -FA

Shortly before dawn on 18 January 2017, police raided the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, in the northern Naqab/Negev desert. During the raid, two people were killed: a villager, Yaqub Musa Abu alQi’an, and a policeman, Erez Levi. Israeli officials described the death of Levi as a ‘terror attack’, and suggested that Abu alQi’an was connected to the terror group ISIS. But local residents and activists told a different story: police had fired at Abu alQi’an without provocation. Our work pitted us directly against Israeli politicians and police chiefs, and exposed inconsistencies in the official account of the event, as well as mishandling of evidence after the fact. -FA

We examined videos from the 2008–2009 Gaza conflict, and from Fallujah, Iraq, where US forces had deployed against the Iraqi army in white phosphorus in 2004. Within a parametric model, we simulated projectiles detonating over various configurations of a generic urban environment. We concluded that in Gaza, white phosphorus was likely used to harass and terrorise citizens in order to clear neighbourhoods, rather than as a ‘smoke screen’, as the Israeli military had claimed. -FA