Shirley Chen's headshot.

Shirley Chen

Assistant Professor
  • College of Architecture and Planning

Shirley Dongwei Chen is an architectural designer, educator, and researcher. Before joining the College of Architecture and Planning at CU Denver, Shirley was Assistant Professor of Practice at Texas A&M University. She received her Post-Professional M.Arch degree from Princeton School of Architecture, where she also served as an editor of Pidgin.

Shirley's recent projects explore how working bodies are registered and concealed in architectural bodies of work. Her writings and drawings have been included in Log, The Avery Review, Room One Thousand, POOL, Yale Paprika!, Rumor Review, Lunch, Utzonia: From / To Denmark with Love, among others.  

Her creative work has been exhibited at Biennale d’Architecture et de paysage d’Île de France (BAP! 2025), Tbilisi Architecture Biennale, a83 New York, telos haus, Trinity Buoy Wharf London, TheGallery at Arts University Bournemouth, the Levinsky Gallery at Plymouth University, and the Turnpike Gallery in the UK. Shirley has practiced professionally in San Francisco and New York. She is one half of the design collaborative DoZa.

Creative Work
Two models placed next to each other with small model ladders set up in the middle.

Two models placed next to each other, one with a facade and the other showing the interior.

Home Elevation, DoZa, Biennale d'architecture et de paysage d'Île de France, Versailles, France, 2025. Photo by Maria Espinoza.

A sketch of a rolling card with a figure playing chess on top of the card and another figure hiding inside the cart.

The Automaton Chess Player Revisited (Drawing), a83, New York, 2023.

Three images, one of a transparent, 3D printed model from underneath the model, the second from the inside of a transparent, green interior of a model, and the third is the a wooden exterior of the model with no windows.

Working Interiors (Physical Model) a83, New York, 2023.

A line drawing of the partial exterior of a hotel looking at two stories with three windows on each story and clothes lines set outside each window.

Kartli Archive, DoZa, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2022.

A model showing interior design of an office wall featuring renderings of buildings and the words Manifesto of the Ordinary.

Manifesto of the Ordinary, Tulane School of Architecture, New Orleans, LA, 2019.

College of Architecture and Planning

CU Denver

CU Denver Building

1250 14th Street

2000

Denver, CO 80202

303-315-1000

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