Celia Toché

Celia Toché, AIA, LEED AP is a leader in sustainable design, current construction technologies, and an award-winning researcher, registered architect, and educator.

In academia, Celia is the principal investigator leading a team of researchers studying innovative construction technologies. Her aim is to use locally available materials to help vulnerable communities face extreme heat. Her work is part of an award grant from Yale Planetary Solutions Center on Climate Change and the Three Cairns Climate Impact Innovation Fund. The work is a holistic approach to working with community, beyond the team at YSOA and the Yale School of Public Health, her international collaboration includes TEC de Monterrey, school of economics, and other global institutions.

Celia’s extensive professional experience encompasses programming, master planning, feasibility studies, innovative design, project management, construction administration, strategic positioning, and visioning. Highlights from her professional experience include programming and design of a community center serving syncretic original pueblo in Mexico City. Other projects include programming an innovative facility that converges the engineering and the performing arts disciplines at Old Dominion University, the Schuylkill Yards Masterplan in Philadelphia, and the Hackley School Center for Creative Arts and Technology blending the computer sciences with performance and visual arts.

While at Pelli Clarke & Partners, where she contributed for 28 years, Celia was the design team leader and project manager for Torre Mítikah, winning the best of Americas by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). She completed the construction of the Stonybrook University MART Building & Children’s Hospital and the FMC Tower; her work includes the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts where she was a key member of the team from pre-design through opening, the Katherine Drexel Chapel for Xavier University, and many of the firm’s performing arts and master planning efforts.

Celia is a member of the Global Faculty at Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus; teaching the final design studio in the undergraduate program. She has lectured at the UN Campus in Panama City of Universidad del Istmo on Sustainable Design Practices for Equity in Climate Change. She’s a visiting lecturer at the Universidad Católica de Bogota School of Architecture. She delivered the keynote address at MIND - Mexico Innovation and Design and is on the faculty of UNIS in Guatemala City where she teaches innovation in construction methodologies in the master’s program. Her field work includes communities in Oaxaca, Hueyepan, Chihuahua, and other remote locations in Mexico as well as climate-vulnerable sites in her native El Salvador.

She’s a member of the AIA, is a LEED Accredited Professional, and a member of the Society of College and University Planners. Celia is the founding Principal of TOCHE & Associates, an international firm with branches in the U.S. and Latin America.

Volunteering in the community is important to Celia as part of her life-work balance. She serves on the Boards of two non-profit organizations, and volunteers with her daughter’s Scout Troop and the Trinity Episcopal Church group, Youth In Action.