Livre - Forensic architecture

In Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman provides an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of his research group’s investigations into human right abuses. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Traversing multiple scales and durations, the case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere. Stunning and shocking in its critical narrative, powerful images, and daring investigations, the book presents a new form of public truth, technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically produced. The practice calls for a transformative politics in which architecture as a field of knowledge and a mode of interpretation exposes and confronts ever-new forms of state violence and secrecy. “The investigative work of Eyal Weizman and his colleagues at Forensic Architecture is truly remarkable, breaking novel theoretical ground while actively supporting struggles for justice. Again and again, landscapes of power, violence, resistance, and ecological stress are transformed in stunning new ways. Among the many revelations in these pages is a new mapping of the connections between climate change, drought, drones, and armed conflict. These are powerful analytic tools that will be indispensable to the construction of a new human rights framework.” – Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine “This forensic process—what Weizman calls ‘architecture in reverse’—shows how the analytical and presentational skills of architects can be deployed in graphic, damning detail, in circumstances that extend way beyond the comfort zone of the drawing board.” – Guardian “Weizman has reverse-engineered architecture to invent a new use of its expertise. His technique, and that of his colleagues, is to forensically reconstruct architecture in order to determine how it was destroyed, which in turn leads to evidence that can be used to prosecute war crimes and to understand responsibility. A fascinating book that uses architecture to give a voice to the powerless, the homeless and the oppressed.” – Financial Times