Gayla Bechtol Architects, AIA is an architecture firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico that has a commitment to urbanism and the expression of place, climate and culture and time.

Gayla Bechtol, AIA has a commitment to quality design with the highest respect for community context and rigorous attention to sustainability. She fully engages the cultural forces of our time, universal and local, with knowledge, insight and research, merging traditional and modern themes of vernacular construction practices. Ms. Bechtol has been practicing architecture in Santa Fe since 1992. She came to Santa Fe by way of Los Angeles, New York and Maxwell, New Mexico.

In private practice in Santa Fe Gayla has participated in several community ventures contributing architectural skills to the process: leader in the development of the Railyard planning process, member of the Trust for Public Land Advisory council, and member of the Board of Directors of Tierra Contenta, the nonprofit developer of affordable housing within a new urbanist context in southwest Santa Fe. Gayla has completed several projects in the Historic Districts of Santa Fe.

Gayla was “community relations” consultant to the Trust for Public Land for the Railyard Park Competition and subsequently chosen by the Railyard Park design team of Ken Smith, Mary Miss and Fred Schwartz to be the community liaison to insure all of the community’s voices are heard in the design process. She has also provided urban design and architectural perspective on a new development in Galisteo that will ultimately provide thousand of acres of publicly accessible open space and workforce housing as well as high end housing.

While working for other architecture firms in Santa Fe Gayla worked on the Urban Design Guidelines for the City of Santa Fe, the Historic Heights Ordinance, the General Plan of Santa Fe, Lamy Master Plan, the Gardner Master Plan in the Community College District of Santa Fe working with the neighbors and the developer to come up with a sustainable and regenerative plan that was approved by the Extra-territorial Zoning Authority in 2003. She was the lead historical surveyor for Clayton, New Mexico and project architect/manager of the First Presbyterian Church remodel and addition in downtown Santa Fe. She also provided urban design and historic preservation analysis and guidance on Plaza Chamisal -an historic compound in Santa Fe.

Gayla is committed to the details of each project knowing that the details support the vision and the vision supports the detail, and that ultimately a project must satisfy the brief and be of its time and place with as much rigor as possible.