Shirley Dongwei Chen is an architectural designer, educator, and researcher. She is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture at University of Colorado Denver, College of Architecture and Planning.

Shirley’s recent projects explore how working bodies are registered and/or concealed in architectural bodies of work. She is also interested in the historicization of technological myths. Her writings have been included in Log, The Avery Review, Roomonethousand, POOL, Yale Paprika!, Lunch Journal, Utzonia: From / To Denmark with Love, among others. Her creative work has exhibited at Biennale d’Architecture et de paysage d’Île de France (BAP! 2025), a83, telo haus, Tbilisi Architectural Biennale in Georgia, as well as Trinity Buoy Wharf, TheGallery at Arts University Bournemouth, Levinsky Gallery at Plymouth University, and the Turnpike Gallery in the UK.

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 is also one half of DoZa with Maria Espinoza.

For inquiries, please email shirleydongweichen@gmail.com.