Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
In this lecture, Jorge Otero-Pailos draws from a series of recent artworks through which he preserved material residues of buildings that won’t sit still in one place—including airborne atmospheric pollution, traces of sweat, water, smells, and building fragments—to discuss what they reveal about the contemporary human condition and environmental urgencies. Otero-Pailos will present a selection from his Ethics of Dust series—imprints of dust from world heritage sites—as well as “distributed monuments” he created: sculptures made from unwanted architectural materials and fragments of monuments he saved from the scrapyard. He’ll discuss his approach to art as a method of experimental preservation and argue for the importance of imagining a future for the built environment that’s centered on mutual care.
Speaker:
Director and professor of historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Jorge Otero-Pailos is an architect, artist, and theorist specializing in experimental forms of preservation. He is the founder and editor of the journal Future Anterior, co-editor of Experimental Preservation (2016) author of Architecture’s Historical Turn (2010) as well as a contributor to scholarly journals and books including the Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics and Rem Koolhaas’ Preservation Is Overtaking Us (2014). Otero-Pailos is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico, and has received awards from the Kress Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Fitch Foundation, the Canadian Center for Architecture, UNESCO, and the American Institute of Architects. He studied architecture at Cornell University and earned a doctorate in architecture at M.I.T.
Otero-Pailos’s work as an artist has been commissioned by and exhibited at major heritage sites, museums, foundations, and biennials, including Artangel’s public art commission at the UK Parliament, the Venice Art Biennial, Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Galerie Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, SFMoMA, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Frieze London, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He is the recipient of a 2021-22 American Academy in Rome Residency in the visual arts.
00:00 Intro by Charles Waldheim
03:04 Lecture by Jorge Otero-Pailos
44:50 Discussion and Q+A
In this lecture, Jorge Otero-Pailos draws from a series of recent artworks through which he preserved material residues of buildings that won’t sit still in one place—including airborne atmospheric pollution, traces of sweat, water, smells, and building fragments—to discuss what they reveal about the contemporary human condition and environmental urgencies. Otero-Pailos will present a selection from his Ethics of Dust series—imprints of dust from world heritage sites—as well as “distributed monuments” he created: sculptures made from unwanted architectural materials and fragments of monuments he saved from the scrapyard. He’ll discuss his approach to art as a method of experimental preservation and argue for the importance of imagining a future for the built environment that’s centered on mutual care.
Speaker:
Director and professor of historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Jorge Otero-Pailos is an architect, artist, and theorist specializing in experimental forms of preservation. He is the founder and editor of the journal Future Anterior, co-editor of Experimental Preservation (2016) author of Architecture’s Historical Turn (2010) as well as a contributor to scholarly journals and books including the Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics and Rem Koolhaas’ Preservation Is Overtaking Us (2014). Otero-Pailos is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico, and has received awards from the Kress Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Fitch Foundation, the Canadian Center for Architecture, UNESCO, and the American Institute of Architects. He studied architecture at Cornell University and earned a doctorate in architecture at M.I.T.
Otero-Pailos’s work as an artist has been commissioned by and exhibited at major heritage sites, museums, foundations, and biennials, including Artangel’s public art commission at the UK Parliament, the Venice Art Biennial, Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Galerie Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, SFMoMA, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Frieze London, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He is the recipient of a 2021-22 American Academy in Rome Residency in the visual arts.
00:00 Intro by Charles Waldheim
03:04 Lecture by Jorge Otero-Pailos
44:50 Discussion and Q+A
