ARTSAKH FORENSIS — regenerative infrastructure of border living

research synopsis

Project Author and Lead
Vahan Misakyan


Research Assistants
Alvard Grigoryan
Aleksander Petrosyan
Lusine Atabekyan
Ani Harutiunyan
Nina Tsaturyan
Gevorg Harutyunyan

At the beginning of April of 2016, eastern turkic neighbor of Armenia carried out a massive attack on the residential communities of the Armenian enclave (Artsakh), resulting in more than 100 casualties. Artsakh Republic is a de facto separated/autonomous region, yet unrecognized internationally. The project used architecture as a language to read and depict the ongoing war. As a result, the project has produced materials that can be utilized by human rights advocates in various truth forums.

1.

Preliminary inquiry and building of the 3d model from the aerial imagery, revealing the urban + cultural anthropological form of the Talish Village(the village located at the north eastern corner of the Armenian enclave).

2.

Media Analysis, summarizing ~70+ Articles published around the world, related to the recent conflict in the region.

3.

Footage archiving (web scraping), deconstructing (identifying + indexing still frames of buildings/structures of interest).

4.

There were three structures selected and analyzed from the village (one residential structure and two public structures, communal center and the school building).

5.

Building sites and buildings themselves were separated into items of interest (areas where the shelling damage could be observed from the collected footage).

6.

3D reconstruction of several items of interest allowed to perform simple simulations to determine the likeliness of all hypotheses.

7.

Each item was analyzed in detail, first, by referencing previous studies documenting similar damages, and second, with the use of a separate physics study based on the characteristics of the used weaponry.



Methodology of analysis and archiving was designed to accommodate a multitude of media artefacts and it successfully did.