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.
The Urban Ecologies core studio introduces students to the city as a designed environment with an emphasis on sustainability, giving them the tools to work through impressions, analysis and design operations as ways to understand the relationship between naturally formed and culturally constructed landscapes and strategies for urban ecological development. Students confront the design of housing as a way to order social relationships and shape the public realm and attack the problems of structure, construction, access and code compliance in the context of a complex large-scale architectural design. Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture
ARCH 2296-01 - DIRECTED RESEARCH SCOPE SEMINAR
LevelUndergraduate
UnitArchitecture
Subject Architecture
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
FormatSeminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
ARCH 2296-01
DIRECTED RESEARCH SCOPE SEMINAR
LevelUndergraduate
UnitArchitecture
Subject Architecture
PeriodFall 2024
Credits3
FormatSeminar
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PMInstructor(s): Surella SeguLocation(s): Bayard Ewing Building, Room 408Enrolled / Capacity: 8Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This seminar will utilize the content, topic, and conceit of measure as a pinhole through which to see the world of Directed Design Research. Directed Design Research is an alternative to Thesis, which lays out a specific territory of inquiry and encourages students to identify the topic and scope of their work, emanating from this specific point of departure. The seminar will lay out a series of methods, techniques, and exercises related to the exploration of measure, asking each student to then define a territory of inquiry within this delimited field. The deliverables for the Scope Seminar include a thoughtfully delimited and actionable statement of the intended design research, the documentation of a minimum of three methodologies or approaches to be utilized in the design research, and a well-wrought syllabus that includes: a weekly breakdown of tasks and deliverables, relevant references and precedents properly cited, and a concise text (3 pages maximum) describing the research activities to be undertaken.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Fifth-year Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture (Directed Research Track)
The course is, effectively, a seminar congruent with a studio, and its ambition is to provide rigorous methodological framing and provocative content scaffolding for the design research activities within the studio. While the studio component will focus on the advancing of the design research questions framed in the fall seminar, the seminar component will consider the best formats and vehicles for the dissemination of the design research. The deliverables for this course will be twofold: a thoroughly researched, documented, and delineated design project; and a textual 'exit document' in which students articulate their research methods, techniques, formats, and outcomes.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr), MArch (2yr): Architecture
ARCH 2298-01 - DIRECTED RESEARCH STUDIO
LevelUndergraduate
UnitArchitecture
Subject Architecture
Period Spring 2025
Credits 6
FormatStudio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
ARCH 2298-01
DIRECTED RESEARCH STUDIO
LevelUndergraduate
UnitArchitecture
Subject Architecture
PeriodSpring 2025
Credits6
FormatStudio
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: T | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Surella SeguLocation(s): Bayard Ewing Building, Room 410Enrolled / Capacity: 12Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
The course is, effectively, a studio congruent with a seminar, and its ambition is to provide rigorous methodological framing and provocative content scaffolding for the design research activities within the studio. While the studio component will focus on the advancing of the design research questions framed in the fall seminar, the seminar component will consider the best formats and vehicles for the dissemination of the design research. The deliverables for this course will be twofold: a thoroughly researched, documented, and delineated design project; and a textual 'exit document' in which students articulate their research methods, techniques, formats, and outcomes.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr), MArch (2yr): Architecture
