Investigative Architecture Combats Human Rights Violations

摘要

"War has migrated into the cities." Eyal Weizman, founder of Forensic Architecture says. What is called urban warfare has, he says, today become the most prominent form of violence in the current war scenario. "It is images of burning and destroyed urban spaces that reach us from today's crisis regions in Afghanistan, occupied Palestine or Iraq." Forensic Architecture has set itself the task of analysing the ruins left behind and reconstructing the numerous attacks on cities by making use of existing photographic and video material. Whereas investigations are usually conducted secretly, and information remains classified. Forensic Architecture also employs the "open-source intelligence" of the Internet. "When bombs explode in crisis areas, today there are many people who film these occurrences with their smartphones and put the material on the Internet. Out of all these small amounts of information we attempt to generate an overall view of the situation", says Weizman, explaining the methodology of their analytical and transparent work. In this regard architects' computer programs are often the only instruments that can spatially structure and visually convey the large amount of video information.