Columbia GSAPP Dean Amale Andraos announced that Professor Jorge Otero-Pailos will be the new director of the Master of Science in Historic Preservation program, beginning July 1, 2016. He will succeed Andrew Dolkart, who has served as program director for eight years.

“At this moment, preservation faces many challenges in light of climate change, the divestment of governments from heritage, the war ravages to monuments, the ongoing challenges to preservation laws, and the digital impact on preservation technology,” noted Andraos in a statement. Otero-Pailos’ appointment will keep the preservation program engaged with these global issues.

Trained as an architect and historian, Otero-Pailos has been teaching at GSAPP since 2002. He is the founder and editor of Future Anterior, the first American academic journal devoted exclusively to the history, practice, and theory of historic preservation. Otero-Pailos has served as vice president of DoCoMoMo US, the international modern architecture preservation organization.

His “Ethics of Dust” series investigates pollution as a transformative force in cities that mediates relationships between people, cultural objects, and the built environment. At the 2009 Venice Biennale, Otero-Pailos applied liquid latex to the wall of Doge’s Palace, peeled off the coating (and, most importantly, the embedded grime), and hung the resulting sheet, a comment on materiality and the diffuse but tangible impact of human activity on architecture. See the video above for a full look at “The Ethics of Dust: Doge’s Palace” and Otero-Pailos’ process.