Presented in partnership with the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lecture Series in SAIC’s Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
Eyal Weizman is an architect, professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures, and founder and director of the research agency Forensic Architecture based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The agency consists of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalists, software developers, scientists, lawyers, and an extended network of collaborators from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. It is committed to the development and dissemination of new evidentiary techniques and undertakes advanced architectural and media investigations on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights and civil society groups, as well as political and environmental justice organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the United Nations, among others.
Tools and techniques developed by Forensic Architecture for analyzing and presenting state and corporate violations of human rights across the globe involve modeling dynamic events as they unfold in space and time by creating navigable 3D models, filmic animations of environments undergoing conflict, and conceiving of interactive cartographies on the urban or architectural scale. The agency also develops open source software that facilitates collective research together with victim groups and stakeholders. Through detailed and critical investigations, Forensic Architecture presents how public truth is produced—technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically—and how it can be used to confront authority and to expose new forms of state-led violence.
Weizman is also a founding member of the architectural collective Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency in Beit Sahour, Palestine. His books include Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, The Conflict Shoreline with Fazal Sheikh, Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth with Anselm Franke, Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics with Thomas Keenan, Forensic Architecture, a Documenta 13 notebook, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza, Hollow Land, A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, the series Territories 1, 2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms, and many articles in journals, magazines, and edited books. He has worked with a variety of nongovernmental organizations worldwide and was a member of the B’Tselem board of directors.
Goldsmith University of London
Kimmelman, Michael. “Forensics Help Widen Architecture’s Mission,” New York Times
Moore, Rowan. “Forensic Architecture: Detail behind the Devilry,” The Guardian
Rothstein, Adam. “Forensic Architecture: How to Make Right State Wrongs,” New Scientist
Curry, Andrew. “The Rise of Forensic Architecture,” Architect Magazine
