"Forensics Helps Widen Architecture's Mission"

Kimmelman, Michael. “Forensics Helps Widen Architecture's Mission.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/arts/design/forensic-architecture-human-rights.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%2BScience&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection.

Forensic Architecture is a research group which uses architectural rendering software to investigate cases for lies, crimes and human rights violations. Eyal Weizman, the founder of the research group stated that “When a state commits a crime, it cordons off an area, which is the privilege of the state. That site becomes a work of architecture, defined by the cordon. A prison by definition is architecture. You can try to break through the state cordon via leaks, media images, satellite photographs. And when they’re not available, memory is a way around the cordon. In any case, the cordoned area is our ‘building site.’” When asked about how Forensic Architecture related to the work of an architect, Christina Varvia, Forensic Architecture research coordinator stated that “What we do is in the tradition of ‘paper architecture. Except we expect results. As architects, we’re also trained to bring different people together to produce a design. But instead, we synthesize evidence.” In London of last year, a Bedouin village was raided by Israeli police officers called Umm al-Hiran. Authorities said that during the raid, a villager intentionally ran over an Israeli officer, killing him, and they called it a terrorist attack. To look further into the case, the research group worked with ActiveStills, an Israeli-based photographic collective. Forensic Architecture used photogrammetry and collected, time-stamped and synchronized the images and videos of the raid to produce a virtual reenactment of the scene to be compared to the helicopter footage.

Forensic Architecture plays an important role in society, as it takes advantage of the rapid advances in technology. By being able to virtually reconstruct a crime gives investigators a huge advantage, especially if the evidence they were given, such as film footage, was not good quality nor was it clear enough to see exactly what happened. As there are more crimes, the ability to reconstruct a scene, taking a deeper look into the crime, decreases the chance of being falsely accused for a crime, when in fact that person did not do anything wrong.

The article, “Forensics Helps Widen Architecture's Mission,” was very interesting to read, and I learned more about the role virtual reproductions of crimes impact forensic science. However, I wished that the author had gotten more into depth regarding the forensic side of Forensic Architecture rather than focusing solely on the cases that they solved. I wished that Kimmelman had described the forensic process in more depth as well.