Surella Segu

Surella Segu is a Harvard GSD Loeb Fellow, former Monterrey’s chief heat officer for the Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and an architect from Monterrey’s Tech (ITESM). She has a Master of Science in architecture and urban design from Columbia University in NYC and is a Fulbright recipient and FONCA Young Creator. She is currently a member of the National Art Creators System from CONACULTA. 
 
Segu is a professor at Monterrey’s Tech (ITESM) in the Master of Architecture and Urban Design program and has been a professor at Iberoamericana and Anahuac and Centro University. She has participated in national and international juries and workshops. She is co-founder of El Cielo, an architectural and urban practice that combines research and consultant services for government, institutions and the private sector. El Cielo’s work has been selected for several international architecture and urban biennials and exhibitions and also has been published in national and international publications. 
 
From 2013–16 she was in charge of Infonavit’s Urban Development department, where she was responsible for the conceptualization and implementation of nationwide urban strategies and solutions to address the difficulties faced by inhabitants of mass-produced social housing neighborhoods. The work included improving master plans, implementing urban rehabilitation programs in housing developments with deteriorated and abandoned housing, developing tools to measure impact such as the Housing Deterioration Index, and involving Mexico’s top architects and urbanists in these efforts. She also generated programs to strengthen communal cohesion and fostered research to understand the impact of community-building activities, such as the effects of urban art on these settlements. 
 
Segu is currently conducting research on common/public space as a possible activator of sustainable urban environments, from a gendered perspective, in formal and informal settlements.