Architecture has the power to create and build communities that bring people together, offering another aspiration to the challenges already facing the profession. Forensic Architecture, a London-based research agency comprising architects, archaeologists, and journalists, is pushing the boundaries of how designers can change the way we look at the built environment. The organization, which is led by architect Eyal Weizman, has investigated human rights violations, including violence committed by states, police forces, and corporations, and uses pioneering techniques in visual and spatial analysis. Collaboration is key, and its outcomes are eye-opening.
One of Forensic Architecture’s recent projects is on display at the Cloud Studies exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, England. Its study maps the toxic legacy of chemical plants built on plantation graves of enslaved people in a Louisiana region known to locals as “Death Alley.” Residents of the majority Black communities that border these plants breathe some of the most toxic air in the country and suffer from some of the highest rates of cancer, COVID-19 fatalities, and other serious illnesses. Forensic Architecture has used advanced techniques in mapping and fluid dynamics—simulating the flow of gases and liquids—to help support efforts by local community activists such as Rise St. James, which has been fighting the construction of a new plastics facility in the region. The research exposes how these petrochemical companies not only continue to release lethal airborne pollutants but also build in the footprints of sugarcane plantations—becoming a case study in environmental racism.
Importantly, the work includes a search for traces of erased Black cemeteries of the historically enslaved buried in these plantation grounds. Under Louisiana state law, cemeteries have perpetual protected status, so the residents are in a race against time to develop a strategy for finding hundreds of missing cemeteries. Working with local activists, Forensic Architecture mobilized tools such as property surveys, aerial photographs, architectural drawings, and archaeological reports to study the evolution of the plantations and identify hundreds of sites that hold historical and cultural value.
Identifying and preserving these burial sites is a way to memorialize the enslaved Black people who built Louisiana’s economy. It also raises awareness of the connection between present-day structural racism and the history of wealth. The result is historic preservation tied to environmental justice. Rise St. James is looking for a form of ecological reparations that sets a moratorium on industrial development, gives the local community agency over how these lands are stewarded, and demands the petrochemical companies clean and restore the natural environment.
Addressing environmental injustice and racism requires accountability, collaboration, and reflection. The architecture profession can be a key player in ensuring that our built environment shifts from one that spurs extraction and waste to one that fosters sustainable, cooperative, and regenerative processes, where we can live harmoniously with each other and the land.
This article appeared in the September 2021 issue of ARCHITECT.
