11th December 2024
Guest lectures in 2024-5 will take place every other Wednesday in the Reilly Room, starting at 1pm and finishing by 3pm.
Bringing together architects, lawyers, software developers and others, Forensic Architecture (FA) is an interdisciplinary research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, with a mandate to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence, including through the radical deployment of architectural modes of visualisation and thinking.
Among other projects, Samaneh will discuss Forensic Architecture’s investigation into ecocide in Gaza. Building on FA’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. FA’s analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.
Biography
As Forensic Architecture’s Assistant Director of Research, Samaneh provides conceptual oversight across projects and oversees the Centre for Contemporary Nature. Her research is focused on developing new evidentiary techniques for investigating environmental violence.
Before joining Forensic Architecture in 2015, Samaneh practiced as an architect in Australia, taught BA Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, MArch Urban Design at the Bartlett School, University College, London, and led a number of short courses at the Royal College of Arts and the AA. Her PhD thesis examined struggle and resistance from the home, with a particular focus on gender and class relations in Iran.
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