Professor Eyal Weizman

Forensic Architecture is using architecture to design new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and analysis to transform the fields of human rights, journalism, and the visual world.

Eyal Weizman is designing a new academic field with Forensic Architecture, bringing together a multidisciplinary network to use architectural techniques to investigate cases of state violence and human rights violations. Forensic Architecture uses tools such as 3D modelling, animation, and visual timeline construction to reverse engineer evidence and create compelling visual representations, working with communities affected by violence and in partnership with international prosecutors, human rights organisations, and justice groups. Eyal and his team are developing new ways to research and gather evidence, cross-referencing a variety of sources including new media, smart phone videos, remote sensing, material analysis and witness testimony.
Forensic Architecture models dynamic events as they unfold in space and time, creating navigable 3D models of environments undergoing conflict, animation and interactive cartographies. The ruins of a bomb crater in Palestine is traced back through the trajectory of the missile to the original site of its launch, to the plane which dropped it, the general who made the order, the politician who approved the campaign; ignored pleas from a sinking refugee boat from Libya are reconstituted from mapping, survivor reports, mobile phone records and nautical charts; civilian casualties of American drone strikes in the Waziristan province of Pakistan are revealed through 3D landscapes to prompt witness testimony.
Eyal has pioneered a number of new techniques for evidence. He and Forensic Architecture pioneered a type of evidence gathering called ‘situated testimony,’ which uses the co-creation of 3D models with witnesses as an aid in interviewing, unlocking a profound new level of detail and memory. He has also pioneered a ‘plume analysis’ which studies the whirling clouds of atomised concrete created when bombs are dropped to mine information.
These techniques allow Forensic Architecture to present information in a convincing, precise and accessible manner, crucial for the pursuit of accountability. Their interdisciplinary team of investigators includes architects, scholars, artists, filmmakers, coders, investigative journalists, archaeologists, lawyers and scientists. The produced evidence is presented in political and legal forums, truth commissions, courts and human rights reports. Forensic Architecture also uses galleries and other public spaces to exhibit visual representations, including the Tate Modern and Venice Biennale. This offers the evidence – and the ability to interpret it – to the broader public.
Eyal has created Forensic Architecture to be an expert for communities rather than the court, offering architecture as an analytic device for citizens to interpret evidence themselves, and have innovative new kinds of evidence of human rights crimes which is admissible within legal frameworks.

Eyal models dynamic events as they unfold in space and time, creating navigable 3D models of environments undergoing conflict, animation and interactive cartographies. The ruins of a bomb crater in Palestine are traced back through the trajectory of the missile to the original site of its launch, to the plane which dropped it, the general who made the order, the politician who approved the campaign; ignored pleas from a sinking refugee boat from Libya are reconstituted from mapping, survivor reports, mobile phone records and nautical charts; civilian casualties of American drone strikes in the Waziristan province of Pakistan are revealed through 3D landscapes to prompt witness testimony.

Eyal has pioneered a number of new techniques for evidence. He and Forensic Architecture pioneered a type of evidence gathering called ‘situated testimony,’ which uses the co-creation of 3D models with witnesses as an aid in interviewing, unlocking a profound new level of detail and memory. He has also pioneered a ‘plume analysis’ which studies the whirling clouds of atomised concrete created when bombs are dropped to mine information.

These techniques allow Forensic Architecture to present information in a convincing, precise and accessible manner, crucial for the pursuit of accountability. Their interdisciplinary team of investigators includes architects, scholars, artists, filmmakers, coders, investigative journalists, archaeologists, lawyers and scientists. The produced evidence is presented in political and legal forums, truth commissions, courts and human rights reports. Eyal also uses galleries and other public spaces to exhibit his visual representations, including the Tate Modern and Venice Biennale. This offers the evidence – and the ability to interpret it – to the broader public.

Eyal has created Forensic Architecture to be an expert for communities rather than the court, offering architecture as an analytic device for citizens to interpret evidence themselves, and have innovative new kinds of evidence of human rights crimes which are admissible within legal frameworks.

As contemporary conflicts increasingly take place within urban areas, homes and neighbourhoods become targets and most civilian casualties occur within cities and buildings. Urban battlefields have become dense data and media environments, generating information that is shared on social and mainstream media. Many violations are caught on camera and are made available almost instantly. These resources can be powerful evidence in determining a human rights abuse or other crime, but they can be difficult to synthesize or interpret. Powerful evidence can exist at the peripheries of footage, or the relationship of different pieces– a sound captured while filming something else, a shadow, positions of actors before or after an event – but these are typically not collected or analysed.
Much evidence in a court case is largely paper based. Lawyers, juries, and officials have thousands of hours of transcribed statements, scientific summaries, police reports, phone records, and photographs. This amount of paper can be arduous to interpret, and very dry. It can be profoundly difficult to use these to viscerally establish what happened, create timelines, or recreate a true scenario. It is also difficult to align these reams of paper with the modern tools of evidence emerging from the online spaces: mobile phone videos, tweets, immediate social media witnessing. The law is traditional, and slow to catch up with modern technology: it was forty years after the advent of photography that photographs were accepted in court as evidence.
A lot of evidence, or ability to gather certain evidence, is only available to state actors. A private citizen cannot issue a subpoena, order phone records or CCTV footage, tap a phone, order location data, gain access to all witness statements. The power of scrutiny is in the hands of the powerful, who often have a strong incentive to shut down scrutiny. States are often asked to conduct investigations on abuses occurring within their own governments, and do not, yet communities affected have few tools to do it themselves. Lawyers, police, and state actors have the power of the mode and form of scrutiny. People who matter – the family, the community members – are spectators.

Much evidence in a court case is largely paper based. Lawyers, juries, and officials have thousands of hours of transcribed statements, scientific summaries, police reports, phone records, and photographs. This amount of paper can be arduous to interpret, and very dry. It can be profoundly difficult to use these to viscerally establish what happened, create timelines, or recreate a true scenario. It is also difficult to align these reams of paper with the modern tools of evidence emerging from the online spaces: mobile phone videos, tweets, immediate social media witnessing. The law is traditional, and slow to catch up with modern technology: it was forty years after the advent of photography that photographs were accepted in court as evidence.

A lot of evidence, or ability to gather certain evidence, is only available to state actors. A private citizen cannot issue a subpoena, order phone records or CCTV footage, tap a phone, order location data, or gain access to all witness statements. The power of scrutiny is in the hands of the powerful, who often have a strong incentive to shut down scrutiny. States are often asked to conduct investigations on abuses occurring within their own governments, and do not, yet the communities affected have few tools to do it themselves. Lawyers, police, and state actors have the power of the mode and form of scrutiny. People who matter – the family, the community members – are spectators.

Eyal is building a new field which offers new tools and strategies for communities affect by human rights abuses to gather and interpret evidence, advocate for justice, and build awareness on a massive scale. With Forensic Architecture, he is forging new approaches to human rights work which is multidisciplinary at its core, lying at the intersection of architecture, law, art, and technology. Eyal sees architecture as ‘an airport, not a fortress’ – a collective method to analyse and embody evidence in new ways and in collaboration with other disciplines.

Traditionally, human rights work has been a language-based field – witness testimony, police reports, lists of names. Eyal is taking this work into a visual domain by using the tools of architecture to open profound new forums of understanding and interpretation for human rights violations. With Forensic Architecture, he uses tools such as laser scanning, 3D and other digital modelling, Google maps and satellite photos, and immersive technologies to recreate the space in which a crime occurred, pulling in all available data (including social media comments and videos, field work on the ground, and constant community input) to create a visceral embodiment of what happened. He uses animation to create visual timelines of what occurred and how.

This work is a powerful tool for communities and survivors affected by violence. These visual renderings allow people to contribute to investigations, rather than depending on the state-often the perpetuator of the violence- or having to wait for an independent investigation to be launched. In traditional legal frameworks, clients must rely on lawyers to interpret reams of documents on their behalf, but Forensic Architecture embodies evidence in a way that anyone can understand. Eyal calls it ‘taking over the means of production for knowledge.’

Eyal has also pioneered a wholly new form of evidence gathering called ‘situated testimony.’ Using 3D models as an aid in interviewing, survivors help the Forensic Architecture team model the space where a crime occurred. Much of memory is very spatial, and this approach unlocks a lot of details otherwise lost. A participant sits in front of a big screen with the team and helps them rebuild the space. A survivor of torture in a Syrian prison starts to describe the dimensions of his cell, using spatial cues (how many tiles across?) to recreate it, and sound cues he remembered while blindfolded, to create an accurate, nuanced model of the prison.

Empirically, this work has been shown to source useful evidence, as well as help alleviate the trauma burden for survivors. Forensic Architecture is working with neuroscientists to explore these effects in more depth. Rebuilding the scene of the worst moments of their lives on a screen can help survivors externalise it and explain it. In a traumatic event, the brain captures lots of visual and audio information, but doesn’t have the capacity to archive or process it. This can come back as flashbacks or PTSD. Eyal’s situated testimony is a spatial process that can help make sense of disconnected sense memories, scrambled by trauma. Forensic Architecture is careful to make sure participants are not retraumatized in the process.

This work, driven by survivors and community members, shows powerful results in acquiring new evidence and supporting participants in healing. It also reflects a core tenet of Forensic Architecture, whose values are driven by the citizens rather than the state. As an organisation, Forensic Architecture does not work for state actors, but rather to expose their crimes, while under the leadership and guidance of the people at the forefront of the struggle.
Eyal focuses strongly on a multi-disciplinary approach, working with architects, investigative journalists, lawyers, artists, activists, NGOs, and the lived experience of the communities affected by violence. Eyal does not take on a project without being invited and assesses whether to take it on by weighing whether the potential case has political importance, high stakes, interest in new research techniques, and local groups who could be trained to do the work as well. When they accept a case, Eyal and Forensic Architecture assesses what material is available and build a relevant team (filmmaker if there is ample video evidence, etc), maintain constant communication with the local community, looking at stakeholders, direct voices, and other fieldwork, then look at what shape the case needs to take to have the biggest impact: a court case, a media campaign, or other initiatives.

Eyal’s investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, including in national and international courts in Germany, The Hague, Greece, Israel, Guatemala, as well as in citizen tribunals and truth commissions, leading to military, paramilitary, and UN inquiries. His work in Greece provided all the visual evidence for the trial against the Golden Dawn, leading to the arrest of 55 members, including 15 members of Parliament, effectively shutting down the party. He has also done substantial work to get this evidence accepted into courts, helping evidence be deemed admissible and thus creating future precedent. Other cases have included:
- The ‘left to die boat’ case, which used their mapping skills, survivor reports, mobile phone records and nautical charts to show how western powers ignored the pleas of a stricken boat carrying 72 migrants from Libya to Italy.
- The Guatemalan military’s genocidal campaign against indigenous people in the 80s, producing an interactive online report
- Work on the US drone strikes in the Waziristan province of Pakistan exposed the price paid by civilians for the west’s war against Islamic militants in the region, pioneering the use of 3D landscapes as a ‘reconstructive memory chamber’ for survivors of military attacks and was presented to the UN General Assembly
- Ecocide in Indonesia: providing evidence to local and international bodies for universal jurisdiction cases in relation to environmental crime
- Anti-racist work with a recent successful investigation into the murder of 9 immigrants by neo-Nazis
- The shooting of Mark Duggan in the UK, who was an unarmed man killed by police
- The Grenfell Tower fire case
- The Colombia Truth Commission around the Siege of the Palace of Justice case
- The disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico
- A full reconstruction of the theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine
Eyal is also expanding into work looking at institutional racism in Germany, which has launched a parliamentary inquiry in response, and led to direct reform of the German secret service to purge neo-Nazi elements. Also in Germany, he is exploring work around historical atrocities, spearheading a project on reparations for colonial crimes, successfully utilizing evidence from crimes which occurred in 1904.

Eyal has also tapped into the art world as a vehicle for democratizing access to his evidence. In a unique cross-disciplinary collaboration, Forensic Architecture creates exhibitions of their evidence in public galleries worldwide. This public airing becomes a powerful tool for outreach and embodiment of their findings. It allows citizens to interpret evidence, agree on a shared understand of what happened, and lay facts plain. Galleries become courts for the people where information is presented and can reach much greater numbers, as well as contribute to emotional closure. It also allows the teams to add a layer of political commentary to the work which is impossible in a court room setting.
Eyal’s exhibits are wide-ranging and site specific. The German Internal Security Service was involved in a racially motivated murder in Kassel, and Forensic Architecture created a full-size recreation of the café where it occurred, allowing participants to walk through it. Their exhibition in Mexico City’s University Museum of Contemporary Arts (MUAC) launched the result of a year-long investigation into the enforced disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa and affected the human rights and legal debate in relation to the case. They have also exhibited at the Tate Modern, Museum for Contemporary Arts in Barcelona, Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, and been nominated for the Turner Prize. The exhibits gain a lot of attention from the media, garner substantial funding from museum acquisitions, and offer a longer staying power than the flash-in-the-pan news cycle or glacial court system. Forensic Architecture’s methods caught the attention of the New York Times, which brought them in to assist on some of their early visual/animated stories (and offered, unsuccessfully, to absorb the organisation) which are now a central piece of their news offerings.

Eyal has a multi-modal set of organisations spread across several countries and sectors to implement his work, which has led 100+ investigations since its founding. At its core is Forensic Architecture, which is a free-standing research and development department he founded within Goldsmiths, University of London. Being situated within the university gave the team considerable credibility, especially when testifying in court, which demands proven expertise for evidence testimony to be admissible. The university setting also supports the lengthy training required to do forensic architecture. However, Eyal was frustrated by the limitations of the university setting and founded a sister nonprofit organisation out of Germany called Forensis. He is also opening a Forensic Architecture department at AUM in Mexico City and has established other offices (either independent or situated within existing NGOs or academic departments) in Kyiv, Rio, Istanbul, Bologna, Bogota, Columbia, Atlanta, USA, Paris and Athens. He also has Forensic Architecture offshoots situated in local NGOs including Beth Salem in Israel, Al-Haq in Palestine, and Earshot, a subset of Forensic Architecture focusing specifically on sound evidence. Many of these are created by former PhD students trained in his methods. Altogether, Eyal has twelve different operating locations for Forensic Architecture and its spin-offs, which are independently funded and guided by a central steering board.

These twelve are a new phase of scale for Forensic Architecture, which Eyal calls the ‘investigative commons.’ He is offering his tools in an open-source structure so that anyone can access them. He is decentralising the work of Forensic Architecture to be more radical, nimble, and attuned to local community needs and power. He is turning the Forensic Architecture office within Goldsmiths into a centre for research and development (‘we never take a case we already know how to do’) and empowering a ‘constellation’ of smaller embedded teams within the frontline communities experiencing violations or social movements, as they are best positioned to make the right decision on tactics. Eyal feels that in order to be successful in turning architecture into an evidentiary technique, it needs to be unconfined by a single institution or sector and work across academia, NGOs, media, and beyond. His new field of forensic architecture is now taught in two dozen universities. Eyal has been tapped as a member of the advisory a committee to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and wrote their new regulation on new technology, open-source tools, and digital modelling.

Traditionally, human rights work has been a language-based field – witness testimony, police reports, lists of names. Eyal is taking this work into a visual domain by using the tools of architecture to open profound new forums of understanding and interpretation for human rights violations. With Forensic Architecture, he uses tools such as laser scanning, 3D and other digital modelling, Google maps and satellite photos, and immersive technologies to recreate the space in which a crime occurred, pulling in all available data (including social media comments and videos, field work on the ground, and constant community input) to create a visceral embodiment of what happened. He uses animation to create visual timelines of what occurred and how.

This work is a powerful tool for communities and survivors affected by violence. These visual renderings allow people to contribute to investigations, rather than depending on the state – often the perpetuator of the violence – or having to wait for an independent investigation to be launched. In traditional legal frameworks, clients must rely on lawyers to interpret reams of documents on their behalf, but Forensic Architecture embodies evidence in a way that anyone can understand. Eyal calls it ‘taking over the means of production for knowledge.’

Eyal has also pioneered a wholly new form of evidence gathering called ‘situated testimony.’ Using 3D models as an aid in interviewing, survivors help the Forensic Architecture team model the space where a crime occurred. Much of memory is very spatial, and this approach unlocks a lot of details otherwise lost. A participant sits in front of a big screen with the team and helps them rebuild the space. A survivor of torture in a Syrian prison starts to describe the dimensions of his cell, using spatial cues (how many tiles across?) to recreate it, and sound cues he remembered while blindfolded, to create an accurate, nuanced model of the prison.

Empirically, this work has been shown to source useful evidence, as well as help alleviate the trauma burden for survivors. Rebuilding the scene of the worst moments of their lives on a screen can help survivors externalise it and explain it. In a traumatic event, the brain captures lots of visual and audio information, but doesn’t have the capacity to archive or process it. This can come back as flashbacks or PTSD. Eyal’s situated testimony is a spatial process that can help make sense of disconnected sense memories, scrambled by trauma. Forensic Architecture is careful to make sure participants are not retraumatized in the process and is working with neuroscientists to explore these effects in more depth.

This work, driven by survivors and community members, shows powerful results in acquiring new evidence and supporting participants in healing. It also reflects a core tenet of Forensic Architecture, whose values are driven by the citizens rather than the state. As an organisation, Forensic Architecture does not work for state actors, but rather to expose their crimes, while under the leadership and guidance of the people at the forefront of the struggle.

Eyal focuses strongly on a multi-disciplinary approach, working with architects, investigative journalists, lawyers, artists, activists, NGOs, and the lived experience of the communities affected by violence. He does not take on a project without being invited and assesses whether to take it on by weighing whether the potential case has political importance, high stakes, interest in new research techniques, and local groups who could be trained to do the work as well. When they accept a case, Eyal and Forensic Architecture assesses what material is available and build a relevant team (filmmaker if there is ample video evidence, etc.), maintain constant communication with the local community, looking at stakeholders, direct voices, and other fieldwork, then look at what shape the case needs to take to have the biggest impact: a court case, a media campaign, or other initiatives.

Eyal’s investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, including in national and international courts in Germany, The Hague, Greece, Israel, Guatemala, as well as in citizen tribunals and truth commissions, leading to military, paramilitary, and UN inquiries. His work in Greece provided all the visual evidence for the trial against the Golden Dawn, leading to the arrest of 55 members, including 15 members of Parliament, effectively shutting down the party. He has also done substantial work to get this evidence accepted into courts, helping evidence be deemed admissible and thus creating future precedent. Other cases have included:

- The ‘left to die boat’ case, which used their mapping skills, survivor reports, mobile phone records and nautical charts to show how western powers ignored the pleas of a stricken boat carrying 72 migrants from Libya to Italy.
- The Guatemalan military’s genocidal campaign against indigenous people in the 1980s, producing an interactive online report.
- Work on the US drone strikes in the Waziristan province of Pakistan exposed the price paid by civilians for the west’s war against Islamic militants in the region, pioneering the use of 3D landscapes as a ‘reconstructive memory chamber’ for survivors of military attacks and was presented to the UN General Assembly.
- Ecocide in Indonesia: providing evidence to local and international bodies for universal jurisdiction cases in relation to environmental crime.
- Anti-racist work with a recent successful investigation into the murder of 9 immigrants by neo-Nazis.
- The shooting of Mark Duggan in the UK, who was an unarmed man killed by police.
- The Grenfell Tower fire case.
- The Columbia Truth Commission around the Siege of the Palace of Justice case.
- The disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico.
- A full reconstruction of the theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine.

Eyal is also expanding into work looking at institutional racism in Germany, which has launched a parliamentary inquiry in response, and led to direct reform of the German secret service to purge neo-Nazi elements. Also in Germany, he is exploring work around historical atrocities, spearheading a project on reparations for colonial crimes, successfully utilizing evidence from crimes which occurred in 1904.

Eyal has also tapped into the art world as a vehicle for democratizing access to his evidence. In a unique cross-disciplinary collaboration, Forensic Architecture creates exhibitions of their evidence in public galleries worldwide. This public airing becomes a powerful tool for outreach and embodiment of their findings. It allows citizens to interpret evidence, agree on a shared understanding of what happened, and lay facts plain. Galleries become courts for the people where information is presented and can reach much greater numbers, as well as contributing to emotional closure. It also allows the teams to add a layer of political commentary to the work which is impossible in a courtroom setting.

Eyal’s exhibits are wide-ranging and site specific. The German Internal Security Service was involved in a racially motivated murder in Kassel, and Forensic Architecture created a full-size recreation of the café where it occurred, allowing participants to walk through it. Their exhibition in Mexico City’s University Museum of Contemporary Arts (MUAC) launched the result of a year-long investigation into the enforced disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa and affected the human rights and legal debate in relation to the case. They have also exhibited at the Tate Modern, Museum for Contemporary Arts in Barcelona, Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, and been nominated for the Turner Prize. The exhibits gain a lot of attention from the media, garner substantial funding from museum acquisitions, and offer a longer staying power than the flash-in-the-pan news cycle or glacial court system. Forensic Architecture’s methods caught the attention of the New York Times, which brought them in to assist on some of their early visual/animated stories (and offered, unsuccessfully, to absorb the organisation) which are now a central piece of their news offerings.

Eyal has a multi-modal set of organisations spread across several countries and sectors to implement his work, which has led 100+ investigations since its founding. At its core is Forensic Architecture, which is a free-standing research and development department he founded within Goldsmiths, University of London. Being situated within the university gave the team considerable credibility, especially when testifying in court, which demands proven expertise for evidence testimony to be admissible. The university setting also supports the lengthy training required to do forensic architecture. However, Eyal was frustrated by the limitations of the university setting and founded a sister nonprofit organisation out of Germany called Forensis. He is also opening a Forensic Architecture department at AUM in Mexico City and has established other offices (either independent or situated within existing NGOs or academic departments) in Kyiv, Rio, Istanbul, Bologna, Bogota, Columbia, Atlanta, Paris and Athens. He also has Forensic Architecture offshoots situated in local NGOs including Beth Salem in Israel, Al-Haq in Palestine, and Earshot, a subset of Forensic Architecture focusing specifically on sound evidence. Many of these are created by former PhD students trained in his methods. Altogether, Eyal has twelve different operating locations for Forensic Architecture and its spin-offs, which are independently funded and guided by a central steering board.

These twelve are a new phase of scale for Forensic Architecture, which Eyal calls the ‘investigative commons.’ He is offering his tools in an open-source structure so that anyone can access them. He is decentralising the work of Forensic Architecture to be more radical, nimble, and attuned to local community needs and power. He is turning the Forensic Architecture office within Goldsmiths into a centre for research and development (‘we never take a case we already know how to do’) and empowering a ‘constellation’ of smaller embedded teams within the frontline communities experiencing violations or social movements, as they are best positioned to make the right decision on tactics. Eyal feels that in order to be successful in turning architecture into an evidentiary technique, it needs to be unconfined by a single institution or sector and work across academia, NGOs, media, and beyond. His new field of forensic architecture is now taught in two dozen universities. Eyal has been tapped as a member of the advisory committee to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and wrote their new regulation on new technology, open-source tools, and digital modelling.

Eyal was born in Haifa, Israel. A Polish Jewish family, his parents were born in a refugee camp after the war, and his grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust. From childhood, Eyal had a DNA-deep understanding of what humans are capable of perpetuating on one another, and a strong sense of justice. Growing up in Israel, raised by parents with a socialist bent, he was active in the human rights movement in Palestine from an early age.

Eyal is a true product of the contested landscape in Israel and the West Bank. He trained as an architect, to the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and offering himself as a volunteer. Before the era of Google maps, he made trips to Israel libraries to photocopy maps in order to make a complete cartography of the occupied territories. In the lines and contours he saw a core facet of his life’s work: that architecture can be a tool of domination, dispossession, and human rights abuses. Settlements were constructed in strange crescent shapes in order to cut access to water or bisect towns for towns. He saw settlements intentionally designed to abuse human rights, with architects complicit – a realisation which led to his later work on creating a field of architecture which did the opposite. His work there became the kernel of Forensic Architecture: it illustrated to him the power of architectural representation and inspired to do a project of ‘counter-mapping,’ where he first used architectural tools and techniques to map out crimes, operations, and distribution within the Israeli settlements, how they distribute and how they become architectural instruments. This work was submitted to the International Court of Justice. Eyal saw the power of these tools applied this way, and the power of collaboration, as he gathered a community of practice and co-collection of information for the map.

Eyal began to hone an eye for seeing space and the built landscape in a new way. He began to explore the contested territories in a book called ‘Hollow Land’ which interrogated the world vertically: the water under the land, the land, the buildings on the surface, the air above. He saw that the Palestinian communities were in a kind of ‘sandwich,’ without control over the water beneath them or the air above.

A core logic of Forensic Architecture is collaboration across disciplines. Eyal embodies this quality as a social entrepreneur, teacher, architect, as well as an artist and activist, working across a number of fields and working at the surprising intersections.

He is an inveterate activist, setting up a number of organisations and initiatives. Everything he has started has had ‘architecture’ in the name, and each in some way designed to push the field beyond the walls it has built for itself as a design discipline. He is the founding member of architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. At Goldsmith’s in London, he founded a new department focusing on social justice, and also set up the Centre for Research Architecture, where Forensic Architecture began, designing a PhD which became the basis for an entirely new field. He characterizes his past entrepreneurial efforts as ‘fighting for the soul of architecture.’