Building Bio - Javier Rives by Francisco Javier Rives Manresa

n20-13-1019

LOCATION

(31째 32' 23.4456" , 34째 32' 26.8758" )

MEDIA LIBRARY

LOCATing PROCESS LOCATIng Locating process The locating process is based on the cross-referencing shapes and elements from the photographoies of the buildings to elements in the satellite image through the observation of the architectural details which are recognizable in the satellite image.

School The school has been one of the anchor points on the locating process because it’s easy to locate in both directions : in the satellite image, because in plan is one of the biggest buildings in the neighborhood, and also in the photographies because of it’s size and it’s peculiar color it’s easy to recognize.

12 school

Water deposit Same happens with the water deposit, which is bigger that the rest of the buildings and has a diffrent colour, but also because of it’s location, which usually water tanks are more elevated than the rest of the neighborhood for having slope for the water supply. Big empty plot Also in the picture number 08 is easy to identify a kind of open space but also as a boundary of the urban fabric, which means that the building is located in one of the edges of the neighborhood. Water tower Last but not least, the water tower is also a good anchor point to locate buildings because it’s almost visibile eberywhere because of it’s height and it’s special shape.

08 water deposit

LOCATION PROCESS EMPTY PLOT

08 12

B11

WIDE STREET WATER DEPOSIT

School

WATER TOWER

Location process After the isolated location of elements in different pictures, you need to use all of those conections between known buildings, landmarks, etc to create a series of anchor points from where to measure to locate your building. Finally the building was codiﬁed and located for later analysis. The code of the building from th eministry of construction was N20-13-1019 and in our codiﬁcation system is B11.

B7 B8

A15

A16

A7 B10

B41

B11

B42

B16

B15

B35

B21

C11

C8 C7

B60

B30

B24

C30 C14

C19

B58

C33

B69 B66

B68

C37

C17 C28

B104

B110

B92 B103 B113

B102

B111 B112

B122

B95 C62 C57 C56

B123

C60

C58 C55

C53

B121

B91

B94

C35 C36

B120

B109 B105

B93

B67

C59 C29

B87 B90

B70

B63

C34 C16

B108 B106

B85

B62

C32

C13

C15

C18

B86

B89

B61

B107

B84

B71

B29

C31

B82 B83

B88

B28

B56

B26

C12 C5

B76

B73

B57

B27

B81

B72

B59

B25

A21

B80

B74

B34 B55

B23

B79

B75

B53 B32

B31

A20

B77 B50

B22 C10

B51 B54

B19 B18

B78

B47

B52 B37

C61

B64

C63

B65 B96

C64 C66

C94

A19

A10

B48

B36

B33

A11

B46

B49 B38

B20

A12

B43

B14

B17

B3 B1

B45

B40 B12

B5 B2

A18

B44

B13

A17

A13

B39 B6

A14

B100

B127

B125

B114

B101

B126

B115 B124 B119

B128

A22

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION War archaeology Which information can we extract from media resources of the war in Beit Hanoun?

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION Architectural description

Instead of trying to have a global understanding of the building, the approach wants to substract and synthetyze information isolated to then link that information with other sources and informations to construct the whole understanding. This analysis is divided into different pieces of information.

2 10

1 7

11 5

Pieces of information 1 Smoke stains in the ground ﬂoor: This information evidences the use of explosives for the destruction instead of manual procedures, like D9 Bulldozer.

2 Second fire on the last floor: Probably an aerial attack from a drone / F-16 3 There right side of the ground flour was open and therefore it was not used for commercial purposes. 4 In the middle of the second floor there is a wall mid distroyed which appears in other pictures completely distroyed. 5 There was a real state advertisement, which means that the building was relatively new and in sale process. This entails that there was a private company behind the construction of the building. Also could mean that the houses were addresed to mid-clss citizens. 6 In different pictures it’s possible to find TV-antennas, which means that houses were in use already, also the lack of a tv-cable infrastructure. 7 In the left side of the ground floor there was a car or cars parked, another evidence of mid-class citizens. 8 The destruction in the last floor completely ripped off the walls making a diaphanous and permeable space. 9 Again smoke s tains in he last floor, near a hole in the roof, which means that there were aerial attacks. 10 Small clues of the structure of the spaces of the house. 11 Rests of furniture, which means again that the houses were inhabited before the conflict. 12 Big holes inside the house structure, which means that there was a CQB fight inside in order to control the building and use it as a war platform afterwards.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

3D Recreation The reconstruction of the building in 3d with Cinema 4D was usefull to understand the structure of the building and the measurements, which eventually matched with the previous estimations. The evidences about the age of the building, being a relatively new building means that the standards were better than the old ones. This could be a reason why the structure resisted the impacts of the aerial strikes and makes an open question about if the building was a previous target or if, due to a combination between location, height and not havig been destroyed by the aerial attacks, turned the building intro a tactical objective as a war infrastructure.

TESTIMONIES

Citizens testimonies One of the videos of Beit Hanoun is about a journalist interviewing citizens. In this video, on two of the interviews we were able to find important information about. One of the first informations is that there were 87 people living in the building before being attacked, people who now is living in a refugee camp. The second piece of information extracted from the interview was that the building was on fire before being destroyed, which could mean that before the combat was hit by drone strikes to eliminate precisely posible suspects.

Warfare urbanism Deluze and Guttari : Smooth and striated space In Mille Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and FĂŠlix Guattari distinguish between two kinds of spaces: smooth space and striated space. This distinction coincides with the distinctions they draw between the nomadic and the sedentary, between the space of the war machine and the space of the state appparatus.

Warfare urbanism PRE-WAR STATE

why a building in a civilian area turns into a strategic target and is being severely attacked?

PRE-WAR STATE

Warfare urbanism

TACTICAL VALUE: HEIGHT

9.55m

B11 5.27m

6.29m

B13

5.55m

B12

Pic. 00

Building height and location One of the first aspects wich tooks the attention is that the most destroyd part of the building is the last floor instead the lower floor or even a total destruction of the building itself. If we analyse the shadow lengths (Pic. 00) it’s possible to understand that the building was taller than the rest of the buildings nearby, giving to it more strategic value than the rest. Then using renderings from the basic volumetric reconstruction of the neighborhood, seems like the building is sensibly taller than the rest.

RENDERING FROM THE TOP FLOOR

South-east direction

South-west direction

Warfare urbanism Axis A

AREAS OF DESTRUCTION

Axis B

Shelling pattern To understand the reason why this area was objective of aerial attacks to destroy the buildings it’s necessary to understand the scenario. Before starting judging evidences, it’s appropiate to mention that the procedure of the IDF is to not move through main roads, in order to avoid possible ambushes. Then we have this axis of destruction which connects with the southern street parallel to the main boulevard. Probably that destruction was made due to 150mm howitzers, insomuch the artillery is not as precise as an aerial attack with a missle, and we can see the case of an explosion in an empty plot (Pic. 01 and Pic. 02) and makes not that much sense to use a missile in a n empty plot which is largely more expensive than a howitzer. The reason why buildings are ﬂattened as a “sandwich” is because of the penetration capabilities of the howitzers (Pic. 03), wich is designed to pierce structures in order to blast in the lower level and make full damage to the building. Could be a result of a decision to suppress possible resistance in those spots without exposing the troops, with aerial artillery, but also could be a decision to make openings in the urban fabric to inﬁltrate the troops in the city.

B11

Pic. 03

CRATER

Pic. 01

Pic. 02

Warfare MEDIA ANALYSIS urbanism SCHOOL

Pic. 06 Pic. 04

North attack Diggin in he IDF’s ofﬁcial blog there is a video where it’s possible to see an explanation of how they found a missilie launcher platform hidden in an agricultural school in the way to Beit Hanoun (Pic. 04 and Pic. 05) But then, at the end of the video it’s possible to see how they are moving from the north to the south facing resistance in the buildings on the city limit, which is an evidence of the attack direction.

Pic. 05

Warfare MEDIA ANALYSIS urbanism

Southern Attack

TANK

Pic. 07

According to a video taken from a ﬁrst-person action camera in the helmet of a soldier, we can identify a tank advancing to the nort-west through the street beside the school in its southern façade (Pic. 07). Also, the series of videos let us speculate about a inﬁltration movement through the houses in the left side of the road.

Warfare urbanism TANK RANGE: MINIMUM DISTANCE

60m

60m 30m

30m

Pic. 07

Tank mobility Also one of the reasons why to smooth the space surrounding the area is to have shooting line for the tanks from the open space on the north. The city turns to be used from the scale of the human to the scale of the binoculars and the long distance shots which modiďŹ es the characteristics of the architectural structures. In the following study cases we will see that that faĂ§ade was atacked because the building beside was destroyed and then there was shooting line for the tanks in the north.

Pic. 08

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION Global Security : Attacking Man-made Structures â&#x20AC;&#x153;Usually man-made structures must be attacked before enemy personnel inside are attacked. Weapons and demolitions can be chosen for employment based on their effects against masonry and concrete rather than against enemy personnel.â&#x20AC;?

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE INDEX

02 CASE 5 CASE 3 CASE 4 CASE 2 CASE 1

CASE 1 CASE 2 CASE 3 CASE 4 CASE 5

Vertical holes on the roof Big horizontal holes on walls Irregular medium size holes on walls Regular medium size holes on walls infantry weapon damage on walls

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 1 Hypothesis : AGM-114 Hellﬁre

Secuences of events Trying to stablish a temporal sequence to the facts happened to the building we need to start reconstructing the pieces from differents analysis. If we rescue the testimony from the woman from the video, we would remember that before the massive destruction of the building, the building was on ﬁre. That fact could mean that before being attacked from different sources, the building was hitted by drone missiles. If we look closer the images, we can still see, near the drone strikes, stains from the smoke of the explosions and the ﬁre, but just in the case 1 and 3.

smoke stains

In the second case, we found no smoke stains, but also the morphology itself of the hole is different than the other two.

smoke stains

Piercing capabilities. One posible reason why the in the ﬁrst case the hole of the missile is on top of the building but the traces of a explosion and a ﬁre are on the bottom is because of the piercing capabilities of the missiles used to destroy architectural structures.

The destruction matches with the AGM-114 or the DELILAH, but doesn’t match wih the rest of the missiles from te IDF/IAF due to their weight and bigger warheads (from 300 to 1200kg) Both case are understood as accurate missiles with not excesive collateral damage, which means that the explosion occours inside the structure in order to have full damage inside the structure but not outside.

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 2 Hypothesis : Merkava MkiV APAM shell

Damage evidences After the aerial attacks from the north, my hypothesis is that there was movement of tanks in front of the infantry from the north and before letting the troops get inside the urban fabric, the tank “smoothed” the space of that location, opening holes in the walls to destroy the tactical capabilities to hide enemies behind walls. The evidentes followed to make that statement start with the analysis of the typology of damage: the destruction in the north-west façade seems to be a combination of destruction from the air in a ﬁrst stage because of the roof holes, and following that, there is more wall destruction but without more drone missile holes in the roof. But also the dimension of the holes and the destruction power seems to be proportional to the damage of a APAM shell from a Merkava MkIV. As it can be seen in the Pic. 09 , a picture extracted from a documentary about israeli weapons, we see that the destruction of the merkava shell is about the size of a breach hole. A breach hole is used as a quick way to open passages between divided spaces. Even in the ofﬁcial website of the IMI (Israeli Military industries), the main advertising image of the APAM is shown with a soldier walking through a hole made out of it (Pic. 10).

Vectorial city Pic. 09

Archtecture itself means a thread to the mobility of the war machine, and the city si shaped through violence. In this scenario, the strategy and the tactical value makes the private property and memory vanish into a secondary place. From an architecture understood as flows that are constricted by the architectural boundaries, which are not precise and not predictable, an architecture that holds identity and memory, by the overlap of this new layer of destruction/production, the city is understood as defined paths drawn from the strategy and the vectors defined by an starting point as a weapon and an ending point as a target.

MOUSEHOLE DEFINITION Pic. 10

A mousehole is an opening that is made to the interior or exterior of a structure (walls, ﬂoors, ceilings, roofs) to facilitate inter- and intra-building communications and movement. A mousehole is usually a minimum of 24 inches high by 30 inches wide in size.

BREACH HOLE DEFINITION

Pic. 11

A breach hole is an opening that is made in a structure using mechanical, ballistic, explosive, or thermal means to facilitate the entry of assault elements. A breach hole is normally 50 inches high by 30 inches wide in size. Breaches made through existing apertures, for example doors and windows, normally do not require additional size enhancement.

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 2

NOT DRONE STRIKE

OBLIQUE IMPACT 1c

OBLIQUE IMPACT 1B OBLIQUE IMPACT 1a

OBLIQUE IMPACT 2

OBLIQUE IMPACT 3A

OBLIQUE IMPACT 3b

Identity volatility In a warfare scenario architecture could shift from a closed fortification which could mean a thread, to a perforated structure which could work as a platform to allow the movement of the troops without being exposed in the open space. This duality between thread and facility means the volatile identity of architecture in the war. This building could have been understood as a thread and, therefore, attacked, but then after being under control, shaped and shifted to a facility to control the war scenario and filter the incoming infantry flows. Also the city is not understood in an horizontal plane in the ground anymore. As we saw in the previous chapter, the tanks have the capability to shot with inclination and make a connection from the shooting point to the target through an inclinated vector.

Trajectories analysis Following the diferent trajectories of the 120mm howitzers from the tank/s we can assume that there was obliquous ﬁre in the façade from the open space in the north (Pic. 12). Also, the north-west façade was accesible to ﬁre because of the previous destruction of the neighbor building in the west side.

Pic. 12

Also this hypothesis would support the idea of the roof hole number 2 was made from a hit of a tank, due to the trajectory but also, because of the nature of the hole itself, wich is not completely piercieng the structure and sharply deﬁned, however, that hit made such linear destruction, posibly due to different fragments from the previous hit in the prexistent wall (Pic. 13). If that hit would have been done by a drone strike the hole would be more deﬁned, due to the piercing capabilities of the missiles. Pic. 13

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 2

Pic. 14

Spatial domination Going to a wider perspective, from a bigger scale, we see that even when there were aerial shellings nearby, those shellings haven’t destroyed close walls, however, we see the whole scenario of buildings being perforated (Pic. 14). Therefore, if those holes are not collateral damage of the aerial shellings, that means that those holes were intentionall made , probably to allow those vectors of visibility and destruction get through the architectural shapes of protection and ocultation

Pic. 15

Walking through the walls Making honour to the title of Eyal’s Weizman book, we can assume that the holes marked in the Pic. 15 were not made with tank shelling andto suppor that theroy there are two evidences: the ﬁrst one is that according to the angle of the rest of the tank hits, those holes would not be possible, and because of the urban conﬁguration of the space, there is not possible to have a shot in a perpendicular direction, and the second one ins the alignment of both in the center of the wall, which could men that they were made from the inside in a process to clean rooms in a close quarter battle.

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 3 Hypothesis : cal. 50 BMG / 12.7mm

Holes characteristics From now there is not a linear sequence of happenings, probably was a simultaneous and not linear sequence of events. If we focus on the holes in the walls, we have 3 different sizes: the big ones, from tank shell, the medium ones, and the small ones made from infantry weapons. If we look closer, we can identify two different types of medium size holes, in one hand we have irregular holes which pierces the wall cleanly, but in the other hand, we have sharply deﬁned hits with a circular shape but divided in two layers: the layer of plaster and the layer of structure

Ballistic approach

CAL .50 (12.7mm)

CAL 7.62MM

MG253 (120MM)

Getting focused on the irregular holes, the ﬁrst step is to understand which weapon made that destruction and what this implicates. After analysing different shooting videos of different calibers, the size that could match that speciﬁc destruction could be a 12.7mm caliber or caliber .50. If now we analyze the weaponry of the IDF we would found the Browning M2 cal .50 which is a very common weapon, mounted on vehicles such the Merkava MkIV or the M-113.

Irregularity and angle

Pic. 16

CAL .50 BMG

If we suppose that those hits were made from an obliquous angle with a Merkava M2, we can argue that the iregularity of those holes are due to the angle of incidence and the accumulation of different hits in small clusters.

Architectural production This type of holes aren’t just architectural destruction, they are also production of new interfaces. Those holes are suitable to be used as a loophole by which throw a grenade to the inner space or as a sniper hole.

CAL 5.56mm AP Pic. 17

LOOPHOLE DEFINITION A loophole is a firing aperture (a minimum of 8 inches in diameter) made in a structure.

Pic. 18

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 4 Hypothesis : 23 to 40mm shell

Holes characteristics One essential difference between the irregular holes and this type of holes is that the irregulars probably were shot from a obliquous angle, as far as the .50 cal weapons ofently are mounted on the tanks, and this sharply rounded holes were shot from a perpendicular angle. This entails an infantry mobility to a perpendicular angle to the wall and makes a connecion with the rest of the bullet holes and the next study case.

The sequence above is extracted from a video where a 23mm is ďŹ red to a oncrete wall. We can see that when a howitzer of that size impacts in a wall, creates a circular explosion in the outside in order to penetrate the structure and blast inside. That process leaves traces in the wall in form of circular smoke stains around the hole. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible also to see that circular smoke stains around the holes of our analyzed building.

SHELL HOLE

RADIAL SMOKE BLUR

Pic. 19

Pic. 22

Changing architectural roles This case could make sense if we understand that piercing projectiles are ofently shot under windows to hit the enemy hidden behind the ledge of that window, and also we can see that those holes are located under windows in our building. Thus, this case is where the architecture stops being a protection for the inner users and, contrary, starts being a methodology in order to decide where to shot those piercing projectiles. The role of the window is not anymore to let the light go inside the space and have visuals from the house, is a interface where to shot from, is a surveillance spot or is an indicator where to shot and make mfull damage to the inner enemies.

SHELL HOLE SHELL HOLE RADIAL SMOKE BLUR

RADIAL SMOKE BLUR

Pic. 20

Pic. 21

ARCHITECTURE OF DESTRUCTION CASE 5 Hypothesis : 5.56mm

Suppression and mobility The main objective of the infantry weaponry is to kill enemy infantry, but, regarding to the architectural aspect, infantry gunﬁre is used to allow the mobility of allied troops.

Covering fire In this case, we don’t have penetration in the structure and therefore, major damage in the building, however, we have also architectural implications on which role plays the architecture and how is shifted through covering fire. The objective of the covering fire is no to kill the enemy, is to mantain continous shot burst in order to make psicological pressure in the enemy and make them stay hidden behind their protections. In this way, they are not able to shot anymore because of the pressure, which allows the allied troops to take positions or assault the building. The pattern of covering fire usually is a large accumulation of regular infantry shots in 2m diameter area in a short range situation. Thus, from a situation where architecture is a platform used to shot safely, because of the use of the covering fire and the characteristics of the architectural shape itself, the same architecture incapacitates the control of the enemy behind that wall.

Study case 4 connexion Now looking in retrospectively, we can speculate that maybe that covering ﬁre was used to block the ofensive capabilities of inner enemies in that window in order to allow the movement of the shooter of the piercing projectiles which were shot perpedicularly to the wall. Pic. 23