Forensic Architecture

Since Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of Brazil in 2019, vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous communities that live in and care for it have been subjected to increasing violence and a rapid increase in illegal gold mining, encouraged by his administration's rhetoric and policies. The research had three interrelated dimensions: the policies adopted by the Bolsonaro administration, the violent attacks against Yanomami villages, and the destruction of the environment. The evidence strongly suggested that the policies and rhetoric of the Bolsonaro administration before and during his presidential term correspond with the rapid increase in environmental destruction and violence against indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon.

When US border agents fired tear gas grenades at civilians in November 2018, photographs showed that many of those grenades were manufactured by the Safariland Group, one of the world’s major manufacturers of so-called ‘less-lethal munitions’. The Safariland Group is owned by Warren B. Kanders, the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza’s perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces. Along that engineered ‘border’, sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone. Since October 2023, Israel’s ground invasion has uprooted most of these orchards and systematically targeted agricultural farmlands and infrastructure throughout the besieged Strip. This investigation builds on our existing collaborations with local farmers’ associations and agricultural workers, to reveal the ongoing Israeli destruction of vegetation in Gaza and its effects on the food security and means of life for Palestinians.

In April 2015, two shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean resulted in over a thousand deaths. The first, on 12 April, occurred when an overcrowded boat was approached by a large commercial vessel. Less than a week later, on 18 April 2015, a similar incident led to over eight hundred deaths after an overcrowded vessel collided with a cargo ship that had approached to rescue its passengers. Both incidents are in part the result of changing EU policies toward at-sea rescue, particularly the retreat of state rescue operations and a resulting onus on commercial vessels to fill the ‘rescue gap’.

Vaca Muerta, Argentina, is one of the world's largest shale oil and gas deposits, that deposit is also home to the indigenous Mapuche people. In 2013, a new deal saw U.S. energy giant Chevron (energy) enter Vaca Muerta, opening the region for the first time to the international oil and gas industry. In collaboration with The Guardian, FA investigated a local Mapuche community's claim that the oil and gas industry has damaged their ancestral land, eroded their traditional ways of life and irreversibly damaged the environment.

On 28 October 2015, a migrant boat left the coast of Western Turkey heading to the closest European coast – the Greek island of Lesvos. The shipwreck resulted in the death of at least 43 people, making it the deadliest incident of that period, also known as “the long summer of migration.” One of the survivors, the artist Amel Alzakout, recorded the journey and the shipwreck on a waterproof camera attached to her wrist. This footage – which also forms the basis of her subsequent film Purple Sea – provides a unique situated perspective on this tragic event at the threshold of Europe.

Working closely with journalists from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, Forensic Architecture collaborated with Earshot to examine the circumstances surrounding the killing of Hind Rajab, her four cousins, her aunt and uncle, and the two paramedics who came to her rescue.

The Iuventa has rescued over ten thousand people from the Mediterranean since it began operating in 2016. When the vessel was impounded by Italian authorities under suspicion of collusion with people smugglers, we used video evidence and meteorological data to refute the allegations.

Eleven individuals affected by the Grenfell Tower Fire—bereaved family members, survivors, and nearby residents—worked with researchers from Forensic Architecture to tell their stories for Testimony Week. An (as of 2024) unreleased feature-length film presents a shared story of the night of the Grenfell fire, first screened at the 2024 Grenfell Testimony Week.

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 14 June 2023, a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank inside the Greek search and rescue zone in the Mediterranean Sea–the deadliest migrant shipwreck in recent history. Our digital reconstructions of the boat and mapping of its trajectory reveal inconsistencies in the Hellenic Coast Guard's (HCG) account and indicate that over 600 people drowned as the result of a failed towing by the HCG.

When the Libyan coastguard interrupted a rescue operation by the NGO Sea Watch, at least twenty migrants lost their lives, and more were "pulled back" to inhumane detention in Libya. Forensic Oceanography shone a light on the practices of a coastguard funded and trained by the Italian government.

On 4 August 2011, Mark Duggan was shot to death by police in Tottenham, north London, after undercover officers forced the minicab in which he was travelling to pull over. As the vehicle came to a stop, Duggan opened the rear door, and leapt out. Within seconds, an advancing officer known only by his codename, V53, had fired twice. V53 would later tell investigators that he saw a gun in Duggan’s hand, and felt his life to be in danger. But following the shooting, the gun in question was found around seven metres away from where Duggan had been shot, on a nearby patch of grass.

Syria’s Saydnaya Prison is also known as “the slaughterhouse.” Stories of systematic torture and executions have been trickling out for years, but there are no images of the interior. In partnership with Amnesty International, the Forensic Architecture research group made a 3D model of the prison based on written witness statements. This film shows how in 2016 the group interviewed five Saydnaya survivors using this model, adding more detail based on their testimonies.