Building Northern New Mexico & Santa Fe: A Lecture & Tour with and about
Women Architects and Builders
Lecture by Sarah Rovang,
Followed by a tour with Gayla Bechtol, Dierdre Harris (DNCA Architects), and Becca Snyder
Saturday, October 10, 1-5pm
$125 for members, $150 for non-members
In partnership with Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
Join the Historic Santa Fe Foundation (HSFF) on 10 October at 1pm for an opening architecture lecture by Sarah Rovang, author of Through the Long Desert: Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright, followed by a downtown tour. The guides for the tour include some of Santa Fe’s most recognized female architects who contributed to the planning, design, construction, renovation, or restoration of significant structures in the Railyard area. The lecture and tour include a welcome reception and presentation hosted at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, where, before and after the tour, attendees are invited to explore the regionalism of renowned Southwest architect Judith Chafee in POWERHOUSE. Attendees will learn about the cultural history that has defined architecture in the Southwest, particularly in Santa Fe, NM, and experience the city’s unique architecture on a tour led by the experts who steward the city’s urban fabric. Post- tour social hosted at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art until 5pm. Tickets and advance registration are required and areavailable for purchase at historicsantafe.org.
AIA students will receive credit for the talk and the tour
Talk - AIA 1.0 LU (pending)
Tour - AIA 3.0 LU/HSW (pending)
Registration refunds will not be issued after October 2, 2026. Participants will receive a donation letter in lieu of a refund after this date.
ABOUT THE EVENT
ABOUT THE TALK
“It is hard to do a hybrid”: Maria Chabot, Judith Chafee, and the Challenge of Regional Modernisms
Decades before Judith Chafee established her successful practice in Tucson, Arizona, other women architects and builders wrestled with the uneasy marriage of modernism and Southwestern regional forms. In the reconstruction of Georgia O’Keeffe’s house at Abiquiú during the late 1940s, Maria Chabot (1913–2001) navigated the realities of building with adobe, postwar material shortages, and the need to establish trust within the local community. Steeped in the history of New Mexico and connected to figures like Kate Chapman and Dorothy Stewart, who fought to keep tradition alive in Santa Fe, Chabot brought her knowledge of craft and local form to the challenge of creating a year-round residence for one of the country’s foremost modern painters. Where Chabot chose to draw on the language of modernism, she did so in a site-specific and responsive way. Attuned to national debates around architectural style, Chabot was suspicious of the European-inflected modernism that influenced Chafee’s education and early practice. While Chafee came to her engaged regionalism through the canon of the International Style, Chabot drew modernism into a practice grounded in craft and local tradition. Chabot’s approach to negotiating regional forms and modernist design strategies is an under-recognized precedent for later theories of critical regionalism and the study of vernacular architecture. A few copies of Through the Long Desert: Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright will be available for purchase at the event.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sarah Rovang is an architectural historian and writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. from Brown University in the History of Art and Architecture, with a focus on rural and industrial environments of the twentieth- century United States. Her first book, Through the Long Desert: Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright, was published with Rizzoli Electa in 2025. She currently works as a program evaluator for the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee.
ABOUT THE TOUR GUIDES AND EXHIBITION
Gayla Bechtol, founder of Gayla Bechtol Architect, practiced deep democracy while leading the citizens of Santa Fe to the award-winning Santa Fe Railyard. GBA is a design-centered architecture/urban design/historic preservation practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico creating award-winning designs for homes, institutions and urban spaces for over 27 years in New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. She received her Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California where she developed a passion for design, theory, love of architecture, context and collaborative planning.
Santa Fe Railyard planning (Property for Gayla Bechtol’s section of the tour)
Deirdre Harris is a Principal at DNCA architects, a small full-service architecture practice committed to design excellence and the quality of the built environment. Since 2002, DNCA has built a portfolio of award-winning projects featuring modern, light-filled spaces that are founded upon a spare and honest expression of the materials of construction. Our projects include the Railyard Galleries, UNM Tamarind Institute, Second Street Brewery, the New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
A licensed architect, Deirdre holds degrees in both architecture and landscape architecture, and has been striving to unite the two fields throughout three decades of practice in Canada, northern California, and New Mexico. At DNCA, she oversees the integration of sustainable systems, landscape, and construction document coordination, and plays an active role in during construction, working side-by-side with client and builder to achieve a high-quality product. Deirdre is detail-oriented and is motivated by a passion for connecting people to environment through the choreography of the perceptual, tactile, and emotive aspects of spatial experience.
Images above, courtesy DNCA Architects, clockwise: Vladem Contemporary, Sears-Hansen Building, Rose-Morelli Building, and LewAllen Galleries from dncaarchitect.com. (Properties for Dierdre Harris’ section of the tour)
Becca Snyder born and raised in Ohio, was drawn to the Southwest by its sunshine, landscape, and rich culture. In 2012, during a co-op placement in graduate school, Becca moved to Santa Fe to work with Barbara Felix Architecture + Design on the guestroom renovation of La Fonda on the Plaza. She was captivated by the stories, research, and creativity involved in renovating that iconic and historic building. Becca moved to Santa Fe in 2017 after finishing graduate school, earning her architect license, and gaining professional experience practicing architecture in Ohio. Barbara Felix welcomed her in as a partner in the coming years and changed the company name to Woven Architecture, a firm known for experiential design, cultural resonance, curiosity, and genuine tradition. In addition to work with La Fonda, Becca has experience providing building conditions assessments, preservation plans, and architectural design work for a myriad of clients including the Santa Fe Train Depot, Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research, Yonan An Cultural Complex at the Pueblo of Isleta, Main Library Branch and City Hall for the City of Santa Fe, the New Mexico History Museum, and at our very own El Zaguán.
Santa Fe Depot. Left to right, clockwise: Depot after Woven Architecture; historic image; and Depot circa 2021. (Property for Becca Snyder’s section of the tour)
About Zane Bennett Contemporary Art & the Judith Chafee Exhibition
Founded in 2005, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art exhibits editioned works on paper, paintings, and sculpture by modern and contemporary artists. Zane Bennett is located on unceded lands of the Tewa people, O'ga P’ogeh (White Shell Water Place), also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the context in which we create, curate and live, and we strive to honor the ancestral stewards of this place.
ABOUT THE POWERHOUSE THE JUDITH CHAFEE EXHIBITION:
Powerhouse celebrates the visionary work of Judith Chafee (1932–1998), a pioneering Southwest architect whose practice synthesized architecture, art, landscape, and ecological stewardship. The exhibition features Framing the Desert, curated by Christopher Domin and Kathryn McGuire for the University of Arizona, with architectural photography by Bill Timmerman, graphic panels tracing Chafee’s career, and scale models of three of her projects: the Blackwell Residence, Ramada House, and Viewpoint. Together, these works illustrate Chafee’s ethos of regionalism defined by her sensitivity to climate, topography, materials, and culture. Her work challenged architectural conventions in the Southwest, creating a potential methodology for constructing the region’s future built environment. Through programming developed by Glenn Erikson, architect and Chafee’s mentee, Powerhouse invites viewers to consider the future of architecture in a region facing profound environmental change.
