Forensic Architecture

On 23 March 2025 in Tel al-Sultan, Gaza, Israeli forces massacred fifteen Palestinian aid workers travelling in clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, later burying their bodies and vehicles in a shallow mass grave. Earshot and Forensic Architecture worked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society and survivors of the massacre to reconstruct the incident with unprecedented precision. The Last Responders is an investigative documentary about this massacre. Anchored in the situated testimonies of two survivors, the film draws on firsthand video and voice recordings captured during the night of the attack by the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Through these materials, the film probes acts of execution and concealment, while reconstructing a fuller account of what unfolded in Tel al-Sultan in the hours and days that followed.

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Return to al-Ma’in chronicles the multiyear collaboration between Forensic Architecture (FA) and Palestinian historian and Nakba survivor Salman Abu Sitta on the reconstruction of his birthplace, the lost village of Ma’in Abu Sitta (or al-Ma’in). Guided by the work and memories of Abu Sitta, FA-researchers reconstructed al-Ma’in’s occupation by Israeli forces on 14 May 1948, its subsequent demolition, and the settlements constructed on its ruins. The movie looks to the present moment and the connections between Israeli military’s conduct and appropriation of Palestinian land during and after 1948, and today in Gaza. The project looks back at the sophistication and sensitivity with which the Abu Sitta family cultivated their land, and the rich agricultural diversity that was lost when Israeli settlements were subsequently constructed over this landscape.

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On 17 October 2023, a devastating explosion took place in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. British-Palestinian doctor and distinguished reconstructive surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was working at Ahli Hospital at the time of the blast. In April 2024, Forensic Architecture (FA) began working with Dr Abu-Sittah to reconstruct the events of the night as he experienced them. Using an interview practice called ‘situated testimony’, FA worked with Dr Abu-Sittah to retrace his steps through a 3D reconstruction of the hospital compound, in which FA had geolocated and ‘photomatched’ visual evidence recorded by survivors of the blast, including Dr Abu-Sittah himself, and journalists.

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When a leaking petrochemical tank at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' caught fire, it produced a thick plume of toxic smoke that spread for miles over neighbouring communities. Authorities claimed that nearby residents were unaffected, even as reports of severe health impacts emerged. Fearing a cover-up, some of those residents asked FA to investigate.

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Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.

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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.

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On 19 February 2022, June Knightly and other members of an anti-fascist affinity group in Portland, Oregon were attacked by a right-wing extremist. June was murdered and four of her friends seriously injured. Despite knowing the attack was unprovoked, the Portland Police Bureau released an inaccurate statement suggesting the incident had been a confrontation between an 'armed homeowner' and 'armed protesters'. Forensic Architecture (FA) interviewed witnesses and survivors of the Normandale Park attack using a navigable digital 3D model of the scene, built from previously unpublished video of the attack recorded by one of the victims, drone images and video of the police response posted on social media.

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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.

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On 23 November 2019, during some of largest anti-government demonstrations in Colombia for decades, 18-year-old protester Dilan Cruz was shot in Bogotá by an officer of the Colombian national riot police unit, Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (ESMAD). The Strategic Center for Evidence Assessment (CEVAP), responsible for providing technical evidentiary support for the Attorney General’s office, conducted an analysis of the event using the available videos and a 3D scan of the scene. They claim that Dilan was not the intended target of the shot, citing an absence of supporting evidence. Our investigation reaches the opposite conclusion. By situating the same videos gathered as evidence for the legal case within a 3D model and applying a series of advanced methods of visual and spatial analysis, we can reveal that there is no shortage of visual evidence available to support the thesis that Dilan was the intended target of Cubillos, rather than the ‘mob’. -FA

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Commissioned by Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, this investigation reveals new evidence about massacres conducted in the Palestinian village of Tantura by Israeli forces after its occupation on 22-23 May 1948 and subsequent depopulation. Launched on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, it brings together testimonies and photographic evidence to locate several mass graves in which the victims were buried—including one previously unidentified.

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On 2 June 2020, the PPB deployed large amounts of tear gas in an attempt to force protestors to withdraw from the streets and squares of downtown Portland, unleashing a highly toxic cloud of airborne chemicals onto the same citizens it was tasked with protecting. That day would become known locally as ‘Tear Gas Tuesday’. Drawing on publicly available information, we counted, located and identified the different munitions used that night by the PPB, and created a simulation of the toxic tear gas cloud in order to measure the exposure, spread, and concentration of tear gas throughout the city. -FA

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The Beirut port explosion on 4 August 2020 ripped through the city, destroying 70,000 homes and much of the port area and leaving over 300,000 people homeless. Caused by the detonation of vast quantities of ammonium nitrate improperly stored in a warehouse by the port, the blast sent powerful shockwaves through the city. The silos, located just 75 metres from the epicentre of the explosion, became a site of ruin. Since the explosion, these ruins have loomed large in the city’s skyline as a constant reminder of the devastation that followed the blast. For some, the ruins of the silos also evoke the persistent lack of accountability for the tragedy, and are a potential source of valuable evidence.

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The August 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut—understood to be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in recorded history—killed over 200 people and injured over 6,500, while devastating large parts of the city. Lebanese and international authorities quickly came to the same conclusion: The vast quantities of ammonium nitrate stored in warehouse 12 were detonated by a fire that was the consequence of shoddy welding work that had been carried out by Syrian workers on site earlier in the day. Building on our previous investigation with Mada Masr into this deadly explosion, in which we mapped the progression of the fire, the epicentre of the blast, and the layout of the contents stored inside the warehouse, Forensic Architecture and the FFA Investigative Unit looked into the validity of these widely circulated claims about the origins of the fire.

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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.

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On 1 March 2022, Russia launched a missile strike on the Kyiv TV tower. The missiles targeting the TV tower landed on the territory known as Babyn Yar, the site of one of the worst massacres of the Holocaust. Historical references, particularly ones related to the Second World War and the Holocaust, have been continuously weaponised as part of Russia’s propaganda machine. Given their claims about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, the damaging of one of the Holocaust’s most significant symbolic sites is particularly ironic. Our investigation seeks to examine the confluence of past and present in this fraught landscape, drawing together a detailed analysis of the recent strike on the TV tower and a spatial reconstruction of the Babyn Yar site—a complex ravine system that used to run through this part of Kyiv. -FA

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On the evening of 15 May 2021—the 73rd anniversary of al-Nakba and during Israel’s latest military attack on Gaza—the Israeli occupation forces bombed the Khudair Pharmaceuticals and Agricultural Tools Company in Beit Lahiya, the largest agricultural chemical warehouse in Gaza. Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq’s newly established Forensic Architecture Unit (FAI Unit) worked together with members of the Khudair family and residents of the area to investigate the attack and its toxic consequences as part of the ongoing environmental disaster imposed on Palestinians living in Gaza. -FA

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Along the coastline of the Gaza Strip, beneath layers of rubble, lies one of Palestine’s hidden treasures and one of the region’s most important archaeological sites. Repeated bombings, and the humanitarian disaster inflicted on Palestinian communities by the decades-long Israeli occupation and siege, as well as advancing coastal erosion and necessary development within the enforced densification of Gaza, have placed this unique site under existential threat. -FA

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On 19 February 2020 in Hanau, Germany, nine people were murdered in a racist terror attack. The victims were Said Nesar Hashemi, Sedat Gürbüz, Gökhan Gültekin, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar, and Kaloyan Velkov. After the attacks, the perpetrator, Tobias Rathjen, fled to his house, where he killed his mother, Gabriele Rathjen, before killing himself. Forensic Architecture, together with its Berlin-based sister agency FORENSIS, has been commissioned by the Initiative 19. Februar, and by the lawyer for the Gültekin family, to investigate a range of issues relating to the attacks, and to produce material for a range of purposes, across legal, political, and cultural forums, as well as media, activism, and advocacy. -FA

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The region, on Colombia’s northwestern Caribbean coast, is the heartland of the country’s banana industry. Urabá is known for extreme political violence, which has gripped the region since the 1980s. Massacres and paramilitary groups have driven away thousands, who left behind their homes and agricultural land. The project shows how dispossession occurred in the shadow of armed repression, massacres, and terror spread by private paramilitary forces, serving local and international banana producers under the protection of the Colombian military. It exposes how these producers benefited from the dispossession of campesinos. -FA

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On 6 November 1985, a guerrilla group known as M19 stormed the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, taking state officials and members of the Colombian Supreme Court hostage. Security forces initiated a counter-siege that lasted two days, leaving over a hundred dead and large parts of the building burned. Instead of focusing on what happened inside the Palace between the guerrillas and the military, a new visual investigation by FA and the Truth Commission examines the logistics of the military in their counterinsurgency operation and what happened to certain individuals once they left the building. -FA

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Since 2018, Forensic Architecture has been working with ‘synthetic images’-photorealistic digital renderings of 3D models-to train machine learning classifiers. Model Zoo includes a growing collection of 3D models of munitions and weapons, as well as the different classifiers trained to identify them making a catalogue of some of the most horrific weapons used in conflict today.

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Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside they are measurable objects, seen from within they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When ‘post-truth’ and denialism obscure acts of violence and compound the harm, we, the inhabitants of toxic clouds, must find new ways of resistance.

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A stretch of the Mississippi River once called "Plantation Country" is now the "Petrochemical Corridor", known to those who breathe its toxic air as "Death Valley". Using advanced cartography and fluid dynamics techniques, we work to support local demands for liability and repair.

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A stretch of the Mississippi River once called "Plantation Country" is now the "Petrochemical corridor", known to those who breathe its toxic air ad "Death Valley". Using advances techniques in cartography and fluid dynamics, FA worked to support local demands for accountability and reparations.

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Shortly after 6:00pm on 4 August 2020, an explosion ripped through the port of Beirut. It killed more than two hundred people, wounded over 6,500, and destroyed large parts of the city. Forensic Architecture was invited by Mada Masr to examine open source information including videos, photographs, and documents to provide a timeline and a precise 3D model to help investigate the events of that day.

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On 1 December 2018, on the margins of a gilets jaunes protest in Marseille, 80-year-old Zineb Redouane was struck in the face by a tear gas grenade as she was standing at the window of her fourth-floor apartment. The following day, she died in hospital. In May 2020, a new element was added to judicial investigation that was ongoing: the report of a ballistics expert, intended to establish whether the officer who fired the shot, a member of France’s CRS riot police, had followed procedure. The report clears the officer, who has still not been identified. Using elements of that report, and a detailed 3D model of the scene, Disclose and Forensic Architecture re-examined the case, reconstructing the precise sequence of events before, during, and after the killing.

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Following the EU-Turkey agreement of March 2016, Turkey had contained inside its territory refugees and migrants trying to reach Greece and the EU. However, on 27 February 2020, the Turkish government encouraged and mobilized thousands of migrants and refugees to cross into Greece at the Evros/Meriç region in order to exert political pressure on the EU to comply with Turkish interest in Syria. On 2 March, after several days of tension, violence escalated at the border. Reports emerged of shootings, and a casualty near the river delta. The victim was identified as Muhammad al Arab, a young man from Aleppo, Syria. We established that rounds were fired along that stretch of the border on that day and Muhammad al-Arab was killed in Turkish soil within 15-135m from a group of armed Greek soldiers standing right on the border. Our analysis supports the testimony of several witnesses who claim that al-Arab was shot by this group of Greek soldiers. -FA

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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.

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On 27 February 2020, the Turkish government opened its borders with Greece in an attempt to exert political pressure on the EU over Syria. Thousands of migrants and refugees were funneled to a single point on the land border between the two countries, the border fence near Kastanies/Pazarkule, with the promise of an open route to Europe. The Greek government responded by deploying its police and military to the region. It warned migrants not to cross, and suspended its asylum system. On 4 March, violence escalated near the border crossing. Reports emerged of shootings, and casualties. Our analysis shows that it is highly probable that the shots that killed Gulzar and, in all likelihood, wounded the remaining six casualties were fired from the Greek side of the border. -FA

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On December 20, 2019, Chilean security forces used unprecedented amounts of tear gas within a relatively small area against people participating in a peaceful and unarmed demonstration. Using open source analysis and fluid dynamic simulations, we measured the concentration of tear gas in the air in that territory to estimate the scale of health risks inflicted on civilians that day.

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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.

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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.

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In late summer of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces battled pro-Russian separatists for control of the town of Ilovaisk, in the border region of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. By September, the separatists had won a resounding victory, routing the retreating Ukrainian army. Even as the battle was ongoing, however, allegations swirled that regular units of the Russian army had joined the battle on the side of the separatists, tipping the balance decisively in their favour. Russia denied the charges. But, in what became a watershed moment for open source investigation, communities of researchers, reporters, and citizen journalists gathered substantial and compelling open source evidence for the presence of the Russian military in the region. This video is a documentary piece that ventures both into the realms of science and politics (it’s part of the body of evidence submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in the form of an interactive platform).

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Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military close to the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides. Our investigation sought to answer the following questions: how do airborne herbicides travel into Gaza? How far into Gaza does it enter? What is the concentration of the herbicide that drifts into Gaza? And what is the damage to the farmland on the Gazan side of the border? -FA

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Shortly before dawn on 18 January 2017, police raided the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, in the northern Naqab/Negev desert. During the raid, two people were killed: a villager, Yaqub Musa Abu alQi’an, and a policeman, Erez Levi. Israeli officials described the death of Levi as a ‘terror attack’, and suggested that Abu alQi’an was connected to the terror group ISIS. But local residents and activists told a different story: police had fired at Abu alQi’an without provocation. Our work pitted us directly against Israeli politicians and police chiefs, and exposed inconsistencies in the official account of the event, as well as mishandling of evidence after the fact. -FA

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Shortly after midnight on 18 September 2013, Pavlos Fyssas, a young Greek anti-fascist rapper, was murdered in Athens, in his home neighbourhood of Keratsini. Both the killer and others who participated in the attack were members of the neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn.Golden Dawn have committed acts of violence against migrants and political opponents ever since their formation in the 1980s, yet most of their crimes have gone unpunished as a result of silent support among the ranks of the Greek police, many of whom are aligned to their nationalist cause. Forensic Architecture was commissioned by the family of Pavlos Fyssas, and their legal representatives, to reconstruct the events of the night from the audio and video material made available to the court.

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