Forensic Architecture

Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, whose mandate is to develop and disseminate techniques for investigating state and corporate violence. Its team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists and lawyers, and its core practice is geolocating videos and images within navigable 3D digital models — a method it describes as born in the “open source revolution.” The European Research Council assessed the agency in 2024 as a scientific breakthrough that opened a new stream of research; the Peabody programme wrote in 2022 that it had co-created an entire new academic field.

For Palestine research the site’s location filter is the entry point, and the volume there is now substantial. “A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza since October 2023” is the largest of the investigations, a cumulative cartographic analysis published as both a web platform and an in-depth report, arguing from patterns of violence to a systematic campaign against life and the conditions and infrastructure sustaining it. “The Architecture of Genocidal Starvation,” produced with the World Peace Foundation and submitted to United Nations bodies and a parliamentary inquiry, analyses the aid distribution system imposed in 2025. “The Massacre of Aid Workers in Tel al-Sultan,” made with Earshot, the Palestine Red Crescent Society and survivors, reconstructs the killing of fifteen Palestinian aid workers in March 2025. “When It Stopped Being a War” reconstructs the al-Ahli Hospital explosion of 17 October 2023 through the situated testimony of the surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah. “Return to al-Ma’in,” made with the Palestine Land Society, reaches back to May 1948.

What makes the archive citable is its discipline about context. Each investigation records the date of the incident, the location, the forums in which it was presented — court, UN body, parliamentary inquiry, exhibition, media — and the commissioning or partner organisation. The site also indexes investigations by methodology, so it is possible to move sideways from an incident to every other case where shadow analysis, cartographic regression, fluid dynamics or situated testimony was used, which is the fastest way to assess whether a technique is sound.

Two practical notes. The site is a JavaScript application and will show nothing at all without scripting enabled; direct links of the form /location/palestine work, while older /category/ paths for locations do not. And Forensic Architecture is an evidence producer working to legal standards, not a news source: its findings are designed to be contested in a forum, and the honest way to cite them is with the forum named.

Sources

• About the agency — Forensic Architecture
• Investigations by location: Palestine — Forensic Architecture