The environmental veins of Syria have been contaminated with the toxic remnants of warfare. Toxic remnants include substances derived from bombing, shelling, and chemical attacks that target the population, industrial facilities and agricultural fields. The investigation follows toxic chemicals as interscalar vehicles that guide us to understand the consequences of warfare, from the atomic and microscopic to the urban, from immediate to long-term impacts.
The project proposes an architecture of sensors that will be implemented across multiple affected sites in Syria and serve different roles for its environment and different communities over time. The DIY sensors are used to scan the environment and infrastructure, recording evidence and providing citizens with data on the long-term contamination of the country, as this data is currently not available. The Environmental and Citizen Sensing Campaign, ‘Istishaar Al Bee’a” will provide citizens with guidance manuals on the protocols and procedures of sensing their environment through a sensor grid system. The creation and sharing of this new body of knowledge will also facilitate a community of citizen participation, and generate new environmental relations. A new system of technogeographies are embedded and adjusted to their specific spaces. Upon deployment, the sensors will detect the presence of toxic chemicals. Within time, as datasets are configured, the sensors will take on their secondary roles as markers within the environment and emit colours that signal when the land is safe to return home. The sensors may then live within the urban or natural fabric for decades to come as memorials, the markers that once signalled the return, and guided those seeking for home.
The project was developed at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
KOOZ What prompted the project?
FB The term Body Politic refers to the body as an object of politics. The Body may be defined as human or non-human; environmental or material. The human can vary from a collective body of citizens that form a population/state or an individual body that is politicised and subjected to state decisions. Focusing on the conflict in Syria that started in 2011, the project investigates into the non-rigid and material boundaries between the human and environmental body in war-torn conditions. The project stems through the intersection of different scales between the microphysical, biological and political; forming the analysis of biopolitics and geopolitics.
The environmental veins of Syria have been contaminated with toxic remnants of warfare. Remnants include bombing, shelling and chemical warfare that target the population, industrial facilities and agricultural fields. TNT (2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene) is an energetic and toxic substance contained in weapons. A series of improvised weapons have been used that include barrel bombs, hell canons and chemical rocket assisted munition, built without proper factory settings and waste management. Many children have been employed to make these weapons, exposing them to toxins. Moreover, properly manufactured weapons such as rockets, mortars, barrel bombs and aircraft bombs have been extensively used throughout the Syrian war. The destructive blast effect of weapons identifies that their toxicity can span across water bodies and the environment causing contamination in a range of scales; from the scale of the disease, the scale of the individual and the environmental scale. The research follows toxic chemicals as interscalar vehicles that guide us to understand the consequences of warfare, from the atomic and microscopic to the urban, from immediate to long-term impacts. By understanding the effects of fast and slow violence, the project is able to propose an architecture of sensors implemented in various affected sites in Syria. Through a citizen-lead Environmental Sensing campaign, the sensors will be used to scan the environment and infrastructure, recording evidence and providing citizens with data on the long-term contamination of the country, as this data is currently not available.
Constructing a research methodology through the lens of Forensics guided me to investigate toxicity through a material perspective.
KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?
FB "Sensing Toxicity: The Return Home" was a heavily research-based project. The first question to arise was the reliability of sources. Information documented had to be collected from a reliable source. The collection of resources ranged from archives, scientific research papers and reports written by Pax for Peace, Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture. The project also raised questions on the practicality of a citizen-lead campaign that will be carried out in unsafe conditions. Due to lack of building, material supplies, and due to political restrictions and war-torn conditions, the result of the architectural proposal was sensors that should be disguised as existing objects, be subtle in their form and easy to implement. Due to the citizens lack of knowledge on implementing high-tech sensors and the restriction of specialised persons accessing the site, the campaign manuals provide in-depth information on the process of handling the Explosive Trace Detector Sensors, the transfer of data via USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to an Arduino board and the storage of data through data-logging software’s such as serial communication.
KOOZ How and to what extent did the work of Forensic Architecture inform and influence the project?
FB Forensic Architecture approaches sensing and analysing architecture and the environment with a detailed, constructive and investigative approach. Constructing a research methodology through the lens of Forensics guided me to investigate toxicity through a material perspective. Zooming out from a skin cell to satellite imagery helped me construct a methodology that navigated through scale and time in intricate detail and precision. The intersection between the microphysical, biopolitics and geopolitics is heavily influenced by their approach.
Specific analytical and architecture tools are used within Forensic Architecture to investigate conflict. These tools range from diagrams, 3D modelling, remote sensing and documentation. In Forensics medical imagery such as x-rays and CT scans are used as an investigative device. This imagery can be used to create new ways of seeing our surrounding environment. The Angiogram is an imaging test that identifies arteries through using a special dye that is injected into the human body. In relation to my project, water was investigated as the arteries of the environment to detect affects of drought and toxicity.
"In order to avoid false information, I gathered footage from the Syrian Archive, a database platform who’s mission is to gather, identify, verify, and catalogue visual documentation."
KOOZ What tools did you use to approach the site and its complexities?
FB Mapping and remote sensing were used to locate and identify incidents, burn scars and their proximities. Satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel were collected to identify specific data such as NDVI datasets that classify vegetation. However, satellite imagery has two limitations; its inability to capture people due to the resolution, and inability to document incidents due to the orbit time. Therefore, with the limitation of resources in Syria and the inability to access a war-torn site lead me to analyse and use citizen documented videos. Protestors engaged in online activism to communicate and record information to the rest of the world.
With the immense flow of live footage shot on the ground of battlefields uploaded onto social media, one must carefully source the footage and be aware of the manipulation of images in the media. In order to avoid false information, I gathered footage from the Syrian Archive, a database platform who’s mission is to gather, identify, verify, and catalogue visual documentation. The footage of chemical attacks lead me to identify the exact weapons used, for example a chlorine steel cylinder around 1m by 50cm in size, obtained by the company ‘BCCI’ in Jordan that sells chlorine gas and soda. The footage also documented the effects of chlorine gas on a human body, identifying instant respiratory struggles, thus guiding me to research into the different choking, nerve, blood and blister agents/chemicals, their modes of dispersal and their effects on the human body. Identifying the location of attacks on the map, and the exact weapon used was the first starting point to further analyse the proximity of the weapon to open water bodies and the environment in the site.
KOOZ What is for you the power and role of architecture within such a complex and intricate situation as that of Syria?
FB During the war, architecture in Syria could be viewed as an investigative tool that is able to be part of a conflict analysis. Architecture or our built environment may be able to tell a story and communicate a certain past or present. It should be realised that buildings are not static entities. The materiality of the building ranging from concrete, plaster, wood and steel continuously undergo transformations through time. Materiality is exposed to environmental and sometimes destructive forces that cause movement, permeability and even ruin. Imbalance in power relations in different cities in Syria is evident through the mass destruction. Cities such as Aleppo and Hums are in ruins, however certain areas in the city of Damascus close to the governing buildings were not affected.
"During the war, architecture in Syria could be viewed as an investigative tool that is able to be part of a conflict analysis."
Bio
Farah Bizrah is a multidisciplinary designer, researcher and alumna of the Architectural Association, London. Her projects range from research in the fields of Forensic Architecture; in which architectural tools are used as investigative mediums in political conflict. To sustainable building design with a focus on humanistic Architecture.
