Award for Forensic Architecture

Research agency Forensic Architecture (see page 31), which is based in Goldsmiths’ Department of Visual Cultures, has received the 2022 Institutional Peabody Award for “co-creating an entire new academic field and emergent media practice, using digital 3D modelling for human rights investigation and documentary, [and speaking] truth to computational power on a planetary scale”.

The Peabody Awards honour excellence in storytelling that reflects the social issues and emerging voices of our day. The awards committee praised the agency: “Using the most sophisticated technologies, Forensic Architecture has instilled itself as a pivotal research agency investigating human rights violations. Congratulations to Eyal Weizman and all for their pivotal work in interactive journalism.” Eyal is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths and Director of Forensic Architecture, which he set up 12 years ago.

Forensic Architecture investigates human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries and corporations. It works in partnership with institutions across civil society – from grassroots activists to legal teams, and international NGOs to media organisations – to carry out investigations with and on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, police brutality, border regimes and environmental violence.

Investigations employ cutting-edge techniques in spatial and architectural analysis, digital modelling and immersive technologies, as well as documentary research, situated interviews and academic collaboration. This is carried out by a multi-disciplinary team made up of architects, computer scientists, artists, machine learning experts, media specialists, archaeologists, filmmakers and engineers. Findings from Forensic Architecture investigations have been presented in courtrooms worldwide, parliamentary inquiries and international media.

One of Forensic Architecture’s ongoing investigations relates to the use of European arms in the bombing of Yemen from 2015 to the present day. Commissioned by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the agency has been tasked with investigating the extent to which corporate and government executives of five European countries have been enabling serious violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen, including war crimes. The team has built an interactive cartographic platform that demonstrates for the first time the direct impact of European arms exports on the continuous targeting of civilians and civilian spaces on the ground.

Following one of their investigations, Forensic Architecture was able to provide evidence to public prosecutors that in 2015 Kurdish human rights lawyer, Tahir Elçi, was likely to have been killed by police rather than militants