The Jencks Foundation and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are pleased to announce the 2022 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award is Forensic Architecture.
This annual award is given to an individual or practice who has made a major contribution to both the theory and practice of architecture.
Forensic Architecture will be presented with the award and give a lecture at the RIBA in London on 22 February 2023. The event will include an interview by Thomas Aquilina from the New Architecture Writers programme. Tickets can be reserved here.
The RIBA Charles Jencks Award was established by architectural historian Charles Jencks 1992. Since 2021, the Jencks Foundation has been coordinating the award with RIBA. Previous recipients include Zaha Hadid, Níall McLaughlin, Herzog & de Meuron and OMA / AMO Rem Koolhaas. In addition to a £3,000 prize, the winner delivers a lecture at the RIBA.
Photo: FA
Led by Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, founded in 2010. Forensic architecture is the process and presentation of architectural evidence in relation to the built environment within legal and political processes. The agency partners with institutions from grassroots activists to international NGOs to investigate human rights violations on behalf of communities and individuals. They have presented their work in national and international courts, truth commissions, parliamentary enquiries, and in art and architectural exhibitions.
Forensic Architecture investigates state violence and surveillance across the globe using architectural tools and techniques. These methods act as a conduit for analysing photographs, videos, and testimonies of violent events in addition to using digital models to interview survivors of violence to access and explore memories of trauma.
Information on investigations led by Forensic Architecture can be found here.
Eyal Weizman, founder and director of Forensic Architecture said: “We are particularly honoured to be this year’s recipients of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award for two reasons. Firstly, it’s the first honour we received from the architectural establishment, and we are delighted the discipline demonstrates its commitment to grow and accommodate practices such as ours, which have been launched from architecture in different destinations. We hope that the award helps inspire architects to use their disciplinary tools to fight for justice publicly and politically. It is also an honour because of my friendship with and longstanding admiration of Charles, who supported the work of FA over the years. To be awarded this prize now is thus bittersweet, as we would have loved to celebrate it with him."
Lily Jencks, founder of the Jencks Foundation said: “We are thrilled to award the 2022 RIBA Jencks Award to Forensic Architecture and celebrate their work with a lecture at the ‘House of Architecture’.
“The award is for the simultaneous contribution to architecture practice and theory. We applaud Forensic Architecture as a hybrid practice that is both architecture (understood most broadly as the execution of work that changes the spatial and material relationships between people), and theory- (their studies that create that work). While they do not build buildings, each line of enquiry by Forensic Architecture seeks to effect direct change in the physical world around issues of social justice, using the tools of architects in atypical but masterful ways.”
Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times architecture and design critic and jury member said: “Forensic Architecture have created and defined a new field in which the skills, spatial awareness and knowledge associated with the profession have been turned towards social justice and focussed on investigating violence perpetrated by states against their citizens. Their work has radically redefined architecture as an engagement with human rights, merging new developments in technology, media and investigative techniques which use an architectural intelligence to demand justice for the powerless, the oppressed and at the crises points of the borders.
“Their work, which has been used in international courts, tribunals and parliamentary inquiries as well as being propagated through the cultural sphere in exhibitions and publishing, has marked a huge shift in understanding what architecture can do to redress injustice.”
The 2022 RIBA Charles Jencks Award jury consisted of RIBA President Simon Allford, Jencks Foundation founder Lily Jencks, Dr. Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times architecture and design critic, and Débora Mesa, Principal of Ensamble Studio and co-founder of WoHo, Thomas Aquilina, architect and co-director of New Architecture Writers programme.
