A rehearsal hall on the campus of the Santa Fe Opera, the Arthur W. Stieren Pavilion (1991) responded to then Opera Director John Crosby’s program for a new bathhouse, voice studio and grounds-maintenance building. A siting challenge given the need for the building to host rehearsal-hall privacy next to the seasonally popular Cantina and swimming pool, the design had to be responsive to the overall pedestrian circulation entailed by adjacencies and contiguities on the Opera grounds. The design solution improvised three functions to take place in three buildings that would be separate yet connected along an arching Santa Fe Style portal. One end of the portal screens the bathhouse doors and  shunts off the passage from being part of the campus walk. The shape of the practice studio — which Opera singers report is their favorite rehearsal space — takes its trapezoidal form from the Opera stage. 

Ken Howard photograph