Camera House Grenfell Street – Independent spatial research group Forensic Architecture is searching for footage of the deadly Grenfell Tower fire to create a 3D video to help understand how the disaster happened.
Forensic Architecture believes many of the fire’s witnesses have footage on their smartphones or cameras that could help piece together how the fire, which killed 71 people, started and spread.
Camera House Grenfell Street
The group of architects, scientists and researchers based at Goldsmiths, University of London, are inviting submissions of footage through their Grenfell Media Archive.
Grenfell Street, Adelaide Sa 5000
The organization plans to use the footage to develop a free public resource, synchronizing the videos and placing them into a 3D model of the tower in west London.
“Each of these recordings may have captured only a small part of the event, but together they form a large and powerful picture of what happened that night,” a statement from the group said.
“We regularly work in areas of conflict or violence around the world, but the Grenfell Tower fire brought our focus back to the city where we live and work,” it continued.
“We want to combine the techniques we have developed with the thousands of pieces of evidence captured by cameras across London to create an effective way for the public to better understand how this unprecedented tragedy happened.”
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The organization hopes that by synchronizing the videos and placing them in a 3D model of the tower, it will reveal the details of the fire’s events
The fire, which broke out on 14 June 2017, is currently the subject of both a criminal investigation and UK fire and safety legislation.
An interim report published in December 2017 revealed that safety regulations for tall buildings are “not fit for purpose”.
“The project is long-term and open-ended and could ultimately be used for a variety of uses,” said Bob Trafford, a researcher at Forensic Architecture.
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“We only hope that offering our platform as a public resource will support investigations and reviews throughout civil society, in line with Forensic Architecture’s core belief that the interests of transparency and democratic accountability are best served by a strong non-governmental capacity for forensic analysis and investigation,” he added.
“So far we have not been contacted by a public inquiry, but we have experience working with parliamentary inquiries, UN commissions of inquiry and legal processes.”
Forensic Architecture works to develop “counter-forensic” techniques that can be used to uncover human rights violations. It has previously worked with groups including Amnesty International and Sea Watch to present legal cases.
Previously, the group created a digital reconstruction of the Saydnaya prison near Damascus, which is used to torture political prisoners. Forensic Architecture has collaborated with Amnesty International to document and expose prison conditions.
