about — Otero-Pailos Studio

Otero-Pailos Studio, led by husband and wife team Jorge Otero-Pailos and Laurence Lafforgue, explores the intersection of art, architecture, and preservation, by collaborating on the creative restoration and interpretation of landmark sites. and creating artworks and producing public exhibitions that expand the range of objects valued as cultural heritage

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Jorge Otero-Pailos is an American-Spanish artist, preservation architect, scholar, and educator renowned for pioneering experimental preservation practices. He employs artistic methods, informed by advanced technologies, materials research, and interdisciplinary collaborations to expand the range of objects that are valued as cultural heritage, and to develop new ways of caring for those objects. His wide-ranging artistic practice finds expression through materials like airborne atmospheric dusts, smells, sounds, and architectural fragments.
His series "The Ethics of Dust" turned experimental preservation cleaning techniques into a signature aesthetic, creating large scale latex casts from the dust and pollution residues found on landmarked monuments. His practice highlights how the dusts sedimented on buildings function as repositories of previously unexamined environmental histories and collective memories.
His works have been commissioned by and exhibited at major heritage sites, museums, foundations, and biennials, including Artangel’s public art commission at the UK Parliament, the Chicago Architecture Biennale (2017), Venice Art Biennale (2009), V&A 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 among others. He is the recipient of a 2021-22 American Academy in Rome Residency in the visual arts.
As a preservation architect, Otero-Pailos collaborates on the creative restoration and interpretation of landmark sites. Notably, Otero-Pailos achieved an award-winning restoration of New Holland Island in St. Petersburg, Russia, in partnership with WorkAC, and most recently, the restoration of the Eero Saarinen designed U.S. Embassy in Oslo (1959) in collaboration with Erik Langdalen as preservation architects, and Lund Hagem/Atelier Oslo as lead architects.
Alongside his art and preservation practices, he is Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), where he also directs the Columbia Preservation Technology Lab, and where he founded the US’s first PhD program in Historic Preservation (2017).
He is the founder (2004) and editor-in-chief of Future Anterior, editor of Historic Preservation Theory: An Anthology (2023), co-editor of Experimental Preservation (2016), co-author with Rem Koolhaas of Preservation is Overtaking US (2014), and author of Architecture’s Historical Turn (2010).
Otero-Pailos is a licensed architect who studied architecture at Cornell University and earned a doctorate in architecture at M.I.T.

Laurence Lafforgue

Laurence Lafforgue drives the studio's mission of advocating for experimental preservation. She oversees operational planning, development, partnerships, and communication strategies. Since the studio's inception, she has led the conception and execution of twenty-six art exhibitions and associated public programs, including Distributed Monuments at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017), Répétiteur at the New York City Center (2018-19), Watershed Moment at Lyndhurst Mansion (2020-21), Souvenirs of the Future at the Pera Museum, Istanbul (2023) and most recently Analogue Sites on the Malls of Park Avenue. Laurence champions diverse content initiatives to articulate the studio’s research-driven projects, spanning from innovative editioned print publications to public programs, short films, and digital partnerships.
Laurence actively supports the art community, as member of Independent Curator International and ArtTable, where she served as co-chair of the New York Chapter from 2022 to 2023. During her tenure, she helped lead the program committee, overseeing the execution of over twenty in-person and online programs. Noteworthy initiatives included addressing the digital knowledge gap among ArtTable members and facilitating curator-led exhibition tours and artist studio visits in New York, with a focus on underrepresented artists. As co-chair, she prioritized the recruitment of new volunteers to the committee, with an eye toward ensuring a robust and inclusive platform for advancing the leadership of the next generation of professionals in the visual arts.
Prior to her current role, Laurence held leadership positions at WhiteWall, an international photo lab catering to professional photographers, and provided consulting services for Collectrium, a cloud-based collection management solution later acquired by Christie’s. As a Partner in charge of digital innovation at Ogilvy, she contributed to groundbreaking initiatives, notably leading the global deployment of Campaign for Real Beauty on behalf of Dove. She also advised the digital strategy team at the National Gallery of Art, and conducted quantitative and qualitative research that informed the institution’s first comprehensive web presence. She founded and managed ArtWeLove, a first-generation digital publisher specializing in producing high-quality, affordable prints in collaboration with leading contemporary artists. Under her stewardship, ArtWeLove produced over a hundred editions in partnership with a diverse group of forty international artists.
Laurence is an alumna of the Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative (AEFI) and completed the Seminar on Strategy for Artist-Endowed Foundation Leaders in 2023. She holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration and New Media Management from Paris Dauphine University and is proficient in Spanish and French.