 Hi everyone, thank you very much for having me. It's a real privilege to be on this stage Very nice to be here Before I begin, I just want to say that this presentation does contain some images Which some people might find distressing there's a lot of imagery of fire So please I just advise view a discretion as we go forward Okay, so forensic architecture so we are a Research agency based in Goldsmiths University in London, and we are a multi disciplinary group We're comprised of architects investigative journalists Developers lawyers Filmmakers were a very varied bunch And we carry out investigations into human rights violations and we advocate for people who've been affected by them So we construct we construct 3d reconstructions of crime scenes and we deal with state violence and in this particular case Police violence. This is an image from our investigation Into the killing of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police in 2011 And we also work with experts in fields such as computational fluid dynamics in order to understand these Complex phenomena in time and space. So what you can see here is the cloud is a representation It's an iso surface of the gunshot residue the detect but detectability of which would have been Detectable by smell in this internet cafe and this is an image from our investigation into the killing of Hallie Jodgat and we also Document violence in time and space and we make web platforms So this is a clip from our video an investigation into the NSO group and they produce a piece of spyware called Pegasus and The the markers that you can see on the timeline there are moments of infection for this this this piece of malware and we also stand with civil society groups and we Advocate for people have been affected by violence So this is us presenting our findings into that investigation into the killing of Mark Duggan to an audience in Tottenham Town Hall in 2019 and we're standing there with the rights activist Stafford Scott on the mic there and We also display our work in cultural forums such as Museums and galleries This is an image from a recent exhibition called cloud studies and this is really important for us This is when the work comes out into the real world and it becomes a kind of political discussion and a conversation That that shapes the world around us So on the 4th of August 2020 a massive explosion ripped through the city of Beirut The blast killed 200 people 6,500 people were injured and large areas of the city were destroyed And we were asked by the rights of the organization Maddam us to look at the open-source material that was available for this case and try to put together that material and Reconstruct an idea of how this explosion Like the things that led up to it and the reasons why it took place and so at forensic architecture we have this concept of an open-source investigation and These are all clips that are taken from the moment of the blast and prior to the blast and The idea is that using this raw material this data Theoretically anyone could reconstruct the investigation. So this is this is kind of one of the ideas behind Open-source investigation and the investigative investigative comments So we gathered lots of these videos and when we gather footage of forensic architecture One of the first things that we do is we synchronize it in time So these are images of the fire taking place in the warehouse before the explosion and the moment of the blast provides an anchor point for these pieces of footage to be situated in time And we also situate those pieces of footage in space So here you can see we've got a very detailed model of the city of Beirut and This is taken from open-street map data And so you can see that we've got all of the buildings in the city and within this model We situate the camera positions from those pieces of footage. So we take we take our cameras and we work out where they are in space And so you can see here if we have an image We've got these architectural elements that are visible and then they relate to objects on the ground so we can locate these cameras And we have this trick we can do we can use a technique known as a dolly zoom a Cinematic technique which some of you may be aware of and what that allows us to do is it allows us to change the focal length of a Camera while simultaneously Maintaining the composition of an image such that the image overlaps with the model and you can see here on the right hand side the Camera finds its place in the 3d model when the image overlaps With a geometry So once we've situated these pieces of footage We can start to look at more detail of the clouds that are unfolding in this fire prior to the explosion So here we use a method called a slit scan and we analyze the color of the pixels that are coming from that plume of smoke And we can see that they go from a light gray color to a dark gray color over time So something is happening here within the warehouse Something is evolving over time And then if we zoom into this area here We can see that there's this small explosion that takes place and there are these sparkles of lights And so speaking to experts on this subject This is likely to be the explosion of fireworks that were stored within the warehouse We can go even further than that We can start to model and sculpt these clouds these plumes that are coming from the from the warehouse So here we're using the sculpting tools to push and pull the surface of the cloud And you can see that using one image we get an outline or a silhouette of the cloud But what we do is we always try to have a polyperspectival view of the scene So we take a Counter-shot another angle and we use that to sculpt from the other from the opposite angle And then we get a three-dimensional shape three-dimensional form for that cloud And we can also sculpt and model the fireball that is at the center of this blast this spherical object And we know that this blast was expanding at an incredible rate Because we can see that on simultaneous frames that have been synchronized the sphere is at a different scale So you could say that the speed of the expansion is beyond the threshold of the resolution of the cameras that were capturing it So this is an incredibly a dynamic object incredibly rapid explosion and so if we Look at that sphere more closely and zoom in here We can use the radius in the center of the sphere to calculate approximately where in the warehouse that blast originated And over here we move to another camera in the city and this shows us the blast With a wider sphere because it's expanded and Here we see another view from across the city again moving out into the bay and Finally here far out to see this witness was able to capture the full evolution of the plume the full evolution of the blast that emerged This was a very critical piece of footage because it's one of the few shots that showed us the full extent And it allows us to measure the height of the cloud so we can see that it's 755 meters high So at 554 we have a cloud coming out of the east side of the building At 6 p.m. We have a second cloud a dark plume coming out from here Again on the east side, and then finally at 607 just before the explosion We have this other plume that has the flashes of light within it so images of the content of the warehouse were leaked and What it was emerged is that this warehouse contained a very large amount of ammonium nitrate and we know from these images that the ammonium nitrate was stored in a very haphazard way the bags were broken the site was Contaminated so you can see from these images and so what we did is we situated these images within a 3d model of the warehouse as well So you can see there at the top the bay number is visible number eight So we know which position inside the warehouse this photo was taken And Here we have a video that was captured from inside the warehouse as well showing more bags of ammonium nitrate and Midway through this clip on the ceiling we can see the numbers four and five So we're able to situate this video as well and a number of architectural objects within the space So using that central location for the spherical blast the fireball and Using the amount of ammonium nitrate that we know was being stored in the warehouse We can approximate the distribution of the area that that ammonium nitrate would have taken up We also know that there was ammonium phosphate stored in there. We also know that there was detonating cord and also car tires and So what we're able to do is we're able to approximate the position of the fireworks the flashes of light that we see in that cloud On the west and also the very dark plume that we see on the east the car tires And so in conclusion what we have with this setup is essentially a makeshift bomb and You can see this quote here from garrus collet Ammonium nitrate is extremely difficult to detonate by fire alone. However when confined and contaminated that this can lead to catastrophic detonation And so you can see here as well from the NASA damage map that the the damage extended to 1570 meters the regulations say that ammonium nitrate should not be kept within seven fifteen hundred and seventy meters of a residential area So we find the state to be negligent in their upholding of the regulations for this hazardous material And in the spirit of open source as well We publish our 3d models from our findings from our investigations online So you can go here to our github page and it links to a repository where we have the blend files For the warehouse and also the site model so another project that we've worked on on the 14th of June 2017 a Devastating fire broke out in Grenfell Tower in West London and This was a fire which killed 72 people and it was the worst residential building fire in this country in UK Since World War two and as Londoners we woke up and we saw this and this was a this was a Devastating fire and it was something that we couldn't ignore and it was something that we immediately had to start Figuring out what happened here like what was going on. How is this fire developing? and so on the night of the fire hundreds of Londoners took out their smartphones and they captured small clips short clips showing the fire and None of these clips on their own tells you the whole picture of the fire, but together they build something bigger So the idea is that with this project What we can do is we can take those pieces of footage and then we can motion track them and Then if we can motion track those pieces of footage We can then project them onto the surface of a 3d model of the building And then the idea is that if we can project enough of those Videos onto the surface of the building we can start to understand how the fire spreads and how it develops on the night of the fire But there's a bit of a problem because this footage is not very suitable for tracking So I mean if you look at a tutorial a guide on how to motion track footage You'll see lots of different pieces of advice some of which is to ensure that the scene has got Consistent lighting to avoid sharp changes and exposure not to move the camera too quickly so you don't get motion blur so you can track features on the image and also to Move through the scene left and right forwards and backwards up and down So you capture the parallax of the scene and you understand the three dimensionality of space but This is not something that we have the luxury of having these people that captured these images Were scared and they were being pushed around the site by police emergency services and This is an object that's so dynamic and so bright and it was captured at night that it doesn't lend itself to motion tracking So we find ourselves using very Manual very painstaking techniques in order to motion track these frames So here you can see I'm using a 3d camera and I'm manually adjusting it using the 3d cursor using annotation tools to outline particular elements so here I'm outlining a window and also Outlining the area of the fire so I can get a camera match Every 10 frames every 50 frames every 100 frames So despite that we still have managed to track many of the videos of the fire spreading at Grenfell Tower so this is a compilation of Videos that we've tracked so far and you can see how the fire spreads up the east facade of the building very rapidly and I think it's It's one of these things where an Individual image on its own doesn't tell the whole picture But when they start to come together and they start to cooperate as videos you get a sense of the Magnitude and the complexity of the violence that's taking place here in this building and So we also have vast amounts of data Relating to the building and it's all buried inside of PDF documents Some of them are inside the Grenfell Tower inquiry documents on the left here You can see a document called external spread of fire and these yellow areas indicate where the fire was at different points in the night And on the right hand side, you can see the work of Eric Guillaume and colleagues who captured other frames And so part of what we do at forensic architecture is to take this information that's buried in documents all All over the place in loads of different repositories and bring it together into 3d space and time so that it is understandable so it is conceivable as an object And so what we can do with these images from these documents is we can create basically a A stop motion animation so the red indicates the area of the building that's burning the black indicates an area That's burnt and the yellow that you can see from the other document is just the area at the full area of the spread of fire So we build this stop motion animation And this allows us to create a full mapping of the spread of the fire so what you're looking at here is a UV map of the building the four facades the building unfolded and This is another part that's very important to our work when we have Information such as that from the documents and we have photographic information We're always trying to compare them and verify them and corroborate them to each other So here we use the photographic imagery of the fire to corroborate those mappings And then what we can do with that map with that shape is we can wrap it back around the building And then we have a graphic representation of the spread of fire So similar to the way that the images and the videos and the footage captured this spread We could do the same with a graphic image And because this is operating on a precise 3d model at a fixed scale a real scale We can do things like calculate the total area of the fire That's total area of the surface of the building that's burnt And we also know the rate at which it's burning as well. So we can use these metrics And we can also it unlocks a whole load of other interesting facets and mappings about the spread of fire So for instance on the night of the fire many of the residents reported hearing these popping noises almost like gunshots And these were the sounds of the windows breaking. So what we can do is we can use that spread of fire shape We can turn it into a geonodes object with thickness We can get it to intersect with the building's windows And so we know when particular buildings so when particular windows are breaking at particular times And then that data can be used and exported and taken to other parts of the project We also know based on that fire spread mapping The likely amount of heat radiation that would have been experienced on the ground at certain points around the tower So here you can see we have a plan view of the building and the lighter color indicates greater levels of heat radiation And that fire spread also gives us an idea of the smoke cloud that would have come from the tower And also the particulate matter that was Emitted from the building and then deposited over London So you can see here the yellow indicates Particular matter quantity that was deposited on the ground around the tower And so as I mentioned before we always try to work to advocate for people who have been affected by violence And this is a process This slide here related to situated testimony and we were lucky enough a few years ago to sit down with one of the residents This is a guy called Nicholas Burton. He was on the 19th floor of grandfell tower And we were able to sit with him with a 3d model And he was able to tell us not only about the layout of his flat the furniture where everything was But he was also able to tell us about his movements on the night of the fire And in this clip that I want to show you he explains the moment when he realizes he has to leave his flat I don't think I saw put I didn't see a person to saw a hand come and grab my wife And then another hand on the right hand side come and say let's go I've got my dog here and the fire said I'm sorry. Let's go. And that was it. We're just into the darkness Sorry, are you with Billy? So, yeah, so there's two fire officers. I never I didn't see them I don't know as a man or woman or anything. I don't know and do you think Pilly was ahead of you Yeah, Pilly came out first because I had her waist Because when when so let's go order up so then the guy came out and I kind of grabbed Pilly's waist So we came through here. Yeah, and then I lost Pilly in this area I let go or she they moved her forward because I was screaming Where's my wife and then someone just said that we got her and then And then I didn't know where she was because this is black It's just can't see can't even see in any light and then we went into the stairwell I don't know where he is on this on that side By the time you're in the stairwell, then we're then he's on my left and I'm on the right. So there's two of us trying to to go down Systematically, you know down flat down flat down flat So I'd like you to think of forensic architecture as the intersection of the spatial and the political I think we're all here because we Believe in 3d software being being free being available to civil society groups I think we have something of a spatial commons or a Digital spatial commons when we work with the tools that we work with So that's just something I want you to hold in your head as you go forward into the conference And also these are just two of the projects that we've worked on at forensic architecture There's a vast array of projects that we've done in the past and covering covering ecological violence We use machine learning You know, we covered the use of tear gas and crowds. So I'd really encourage you to On my speaker profile, you can go to the forensic architecture website Have a look at the projects that we've worked on or of course feel free to reach out to me some point during the conference And thank you very much