ANALOGUE SITES BY JORGE OTERO-PAILOS was a public art exhibition of large steel sculptures that Jorge Otero-Pailos created while preserving the former U.S. Embassy in Oslo, a Saarinen-designed landmark. It was presented by the Sculpture Committee for the Fund for Park Avenue and NYC Parks. Wrought from the fence that once surrounded the building, the sculptures were placed along Park Avenue in dialogue with mid-century modernist landmarks and the Park Avenue Armory.

public programs

The exhibition was accompanied by public programs developed in partnership with esteemed cultural partners, including the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, the American Scandinavian Foundation, The Winter Show, Columbia School of the Arts and Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. In addition, an exhibition digital guide will remain acccessible thanks to Bloomberg Connects, allowing anyone to dive deeper into the sculpture-making process and the history of American modernist architecture.

bloomberg Connects Digital guide

The interviews below are part of the Analogue Sites exhibition digital guide, which is made possible thanks to the support of Bloomberg Connects and The Fund for Park Avenue. View the exhibition guide on your phone.

A conversation between Jorge Otero-Pailos and David B. Peterson, author of U.S. Embassies of the Cold War: The Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense and the Executive Director of the Onera Foundation. Dive into the history of American modernist architecture and the significance of mid century modern American Embassies built during the Cold War, many of which are being decommissioned and sold.

A conversation between Jorge Otero-Pailos and Phyllis Lambert, architect, author, photographer, conservation activist, and legendary founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Learn about the history of the Seagram Building, commissioned by Mrs. Lambert and designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1958, and her pioneering sculpture program on Park Avenue.

panel discussions archives

Wednesday January 24, 2024 at The Winter Show in New York

Exhibition Preview and Panel Discussion

Contemporary Art and Cold War Embassies: Moderator: Julia P. Herzberg, Art Historian, Independent Curator and member of The Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee ; Panelists: Jennifer Duncan, Director, Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies ; Jorge Otero-Pailos, Artist, Preservationist and Director of the Historic Preservation Program, Columbia University GSAPP ; David Peterson, Author and Founder of the Onera Foundation. Presented in collaboration with The Fund for Park Avenue.

Thursday, March 21, 6:30 PM at Columbia University School of the Arts

To Transform: Analogue Sites 

Discussion with Jorge Otero-Pailos and visual artist and Columbia University School of the Arts Visual Arts Program Chair, Matthew Buckingham

Tuesday, March 26, 7 PM at the American Scandinavian Foundation

Reimagining Eero Saarinen: The U.S. Embassies of the Cold War and Beyond

Discussion with Jorge Otero-Pailos, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, and David Peterson

Monday, April 15, 6:30 PM at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

The Paul S. Byard Memorial Lecture: A panel presentation on the restoration of the former U.S. Embassy in Oslo originally designed by Eero Saarinen in 1959. Speakers: Svein Lund (Lundhagem Arkitekter) and Jonas Norsted (Atelier Oslo) with Erik Langdalen and Jorge Otero-Pailos. Response by Professor Laurie Hawkinson.

About Jorge Otero-Pailos 

Jorge Otero-Pailos is an American-Spanish artist, preservation architect, scholar, and educator renowned for pioneering experimental preservation practices. With Otero-Pailos Studio, co-founded with his partner Laurence Lafforgue, 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 (2016), 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 award-winning 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 studied architecture at Cornell University and earned a doctorate in architecture at M.I.T.

Treaties on De-Fences is an artist book of prints created by Jorge Otero-Pailos and made available to the public on the occasion of his 2024 Park Avenue sculptures exhibition Analogue Sites. It was first presented in January 2024 at the Winter Show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. All proceeds from the sale of the artist book and prints will contribute directly to developing exhibition programs to benefit the general public.