The Illinois School of Architecture Lecture | Spring 2022
Publications
Preservation Is Overtaking Us by
Preservation is Overtaking Us brings together two lectures given by Rem Koolhaas at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, along with a response (framed as a supplement to the original lectures) by Jorge Otero-Pailos. In the first essay Koolhaas describes alternative strategies for preserving Beijing, China. The second talk marks the inaugural Paul Spencer Byard lecture, named in celebration of the longtime professor of Historic Preservation at GSAPP. These two lectures trace key moments of Koolhaas' thinking on preservation, including his practice's entry into China and the commission to redevelop the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a format well known to Koolhaas' readers, Otero-Pailos reworks the lectures into a working manifesto, using it to interrogate OMA's work from within the discipline of preservation.
ISBN: 9781883584740Publication Date: 2014
Experimental Preservation by
Old things, historic things, smelly dirty things, all the things that were considered the very opposite of "contemporary," have suddenly irrupted forcefully into architecture and art, blurring their boundaries. This book takes stock of the emerging generation behind this turn, and examines their experimental engagements with the preservation of culturally charged objects. Structured around a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among practitioners and thinkers, and illustrated with recent projects, the book provides a window into the unfolding intellectual frameworks, aesthetic modes, cultural ambitions, and political commitments that are the basis of experimental preservation.
ISBN: 303778492XPublication Date: 2016
Architecture's Historical Turn by
Architecture's Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. Jorge Otero-Pailos shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. In the first critical intellectual account of the movement, Otero-Pailos discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, Otero-Pailos contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism's historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory--especially the theory of architectural history--a new importance over practice. However, as Otero-Pailos makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory. Otero-Pailos reveals how, ultimately, the rise of architectural phenomenology played a crucial double role in the rise of postmodernism, creating the antimodern specter of a historical consciousness and offering the modern notion of essential experience as the means to defeat it.
ISBN: 9780816666034Publication Date: 2010
(E-book) Architecture's historical turn : phenomenology and the rise of the postmodern by ISBN: 0816673624Publication Date: 2010
Ritual Cleaning by
JORGE OTERO-PAILOS. 2010. “Ritual Cleaning.” Perspecta 43 (January): 131–87.
Publication Date: 2010- Architecture and Human Attachment: An Interview with Jorge Otero-Pailos by Dr. Jorge Otero-Pailos is the director of the Historic Preservation program at Columbia University and one of the foremost practitioners of experimental preservation. His Ethics of Dust series in particular has provocatively examined the relationship between pollution and cultural artifacts. What follows is an interview conducted with Dr. Otero-Pailos conducted by Ted Shelton and Tricia Stuth, the editors of this issue. It was conducted in Knoxville, Tennessee and has been edited for length and clarity.Publication Date: 2018
- Remaking Contested Architectural Heritage, Rethinking Public Space | Rehaciendo el patrimonio arquitectónico controvertido, repensando el espacio público by Available in English and Spanish. Otero-Pailos, Jorge, Sergio Sebastián, and Angélica Fernández-Morales. 2020. “Remaking Contested Architectural Heritage, Rethinking Public Space.” ZARCH; Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture & Urbanism, no. 15 (December): 250–54.Publication Date: 2020
- Spain on Spain : debates sobre la arquitectura contemporanea = debates on contemporary architecture byISBN: 8472071936Publication Date: 2009
- The Ambivalence of Smoke: Pollution and Modern Architectural Historiography. by OTERO-PAILOS, JORGE. 2011. “The Ambivalence of Smoke: Pollution and Modern Architectural Historiography.” Grey Room, no. 44 (Summer): 90–113.Publication Date: 2011
- In Notre-Dame, We Find a Heritage That Invites Us to Breathe and Reflect: A Spire Competition Is the Wrong Approach. by Otero-Pailos, Jorge. 2020. “In Notre-Dame, We Find a Heritage That Invites Us to Breathe and Reflect: A Spire Competition Is the Wrong Approach.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation History Theory & Criticism 17 (1): 75–78. doi:10.5749/futuante.17.1.0075.Publication Date: 2020
- Introduction to the Special Issue on Preservation and War Freedom from Violence by Jorge Otero-Pailos. 2017. “Introduction to the Special Issue on Preservation and War Freedom from Violence.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 14 (1): iii–viii. doi:10.5749/futuante.14.1.0iii.Publication Date: 2017
- Editors' Introduction: Smell and Preservation by Adam Jasper, and Jorge Otero-Pailos. 2016. “Editors’ Introduction: Smell and Preservation.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 13 (2): iii–viii. doi:10.5749/futuante.13.2.0iii.Publication Date: 2016