Forensic Architecture is creating a database to help unravel how the fire that killed 71 people spread. Anyone with information can get involved

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In contrast to its other work, which has focussed on specific outcomes or inquiries, Forensic Architecture's work on Grenfell is much more open-ended, sitting somewhere between a form of public memory and an investigative archive which it hopes will throw up new leads. 

Over the last few months, the team at Forensic Architecture, housed at London’s Goldsmiths University in Lewisham, has been working to piece together data and footage from the event using a mixture of video and imagery from Youtube, Periscope and other forms of social media, as well as footage from Sky News, which is a partner on the project. 

“The thing about the fire is that lots of the most crucial stuff happens early on, and a lot of that is hand-held and is more shaky footage, and the news crews arrive around 3 or 4am and that’s when you get the really stable shots,” Nick Masterton, a technologist on the project, says. “If somebody has a still image or a tripod shot at a very critical moment, it can supersede or… provide more information than several lower quality shots.” 

Stitching all the information together, and mapping it onto a model of the building, it is at the beginning of a process of building a navigable 12-hour video of what took place at Grenfell. “We have prototyped and are in the process of developing our own tool for visualising the projected videos,” Masterton says. Its working title is the Grenfell Media Archive – but it is currently only being used by the team internally. The long-term hope – in the wake of the call for footage – is to have a database substantial enough to begin sharing it externally as an interactive archive. 

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