Dawn R. Schuette, AIA, LEED AP, Partner

For Dawn, an unattended piano has always been an open invitation, and the grooves of the family-favorite LPs were worn smooth from heavy use. She sang in middle school and church choirs, but latent and very subtle leadership abilities led her to the pipe organ, which she played for church services and choral performances until leaving Lincoln, Nebraska, for Chicago to study architecture. Somewhere in the interim, on a school tour, conversation audibly creeping along the vaulted stone ceiling of the Nebraska State Capitol left its mark. At Illinois Institute of Technology, her interests turned toward city and regional planning for its comprehensive view of the built environment and the place of people within it, but the lifelong interest in music reasserted itself shortly after college when she joined Kirkegaard Associates to focus on acoustics. Fifteen years and many profoundly successful projects later, she joined Threshold as a partner.

Dawn is an Adjunct Professor in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and has authored an invited chapter for the Wiley & Sons publication Building Type Basics for Performing Arts Facilities. She served as Secretary of the AIA Chicago Chapter Board for several years and is recent past Chair of the National AIA Advisory Group for the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, and Architecture (IFRAA). Dawn has contributed articles to Faith and Form, Architecture, Fabric Architecture, Journal of American Organbuilding, and Auditoria magazines and has presented her work at national conventions for the American Institute of Organbuilders, the American Institute of Architects, and the Acoustical Society of America, including ASA international meetings in Berlin in 1999 and Paris in 2008.

• Verizon Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Pressure Point Recording Studios, Chicago, Illinois
• Slagle Auditorium, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota
• Inspiring Body of Christ Church, Dallas, Texas
• Peter Kiewit Concert Hall, The Holland Performing Arts Center, Omaha, Nebraska
• Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Atlanta, Georgia
• Schwartz Center for the Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia