Shawn Evans

Shawn joined MASS Design Group as a Principal in 2022 through MASS’s strategic partnership with AOS Architects. Shawn was the Principal-in-Charge of the Santa Fe office of AOS Architects as well as the firm’s Director of Preservation and Cultural Projects. His leadership guided AOS Architects to win the AIA New Mexico Firm of the Year Award for 2021. During his 27 years at AOS, he led a wide range of planning, preservation, museum, higher education, affordable housing, and tribal projects. His significant projects include preservation and housing work at Ohkay Owingeh and Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo; museum master plans, renovations, and expansions at Eastern State Penitentiary and the Penn Museum in Philadelphia; higher education projects at New Mexico State University, the University of New Mexico, Southern Methodist University in Taos, and St. John’s College in Santa Fe; a large expansion of Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm in Albuquerque; preservation projects at the Palace of the Governors, Oppenheimer House, and D.H. Lawrence Ranch; and a new net-zero affordable housing project for artists in Santa Fe, Siler Yard Arts + Creativity Center. He is listed on the NM-SHPO Directory of approved consultants for “Historic Architecture,” and by the American Institute for Conservation as an approved Building Assessor.

Shawn studied architecture at Texas A&M University as an undergraduate and holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught architectural design at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of New Mexico. Nationally recognized as a leader in historic preservation, he has spoken at numerous regional and national preservation, museum, and tribal conferences. He received AIA Philadelphia’s Young Architect Awards in 2004. In 2010, he received the prestigious James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Fellowship, through which he collaborated with Pueblo tribes of the American Southwest on a study of their contemporary preservation and rehabilitation efforts. His work at Ohkay Owingeh and Eastern State Penitentiary was exhibited during the 2018 Venice Biennale. Shawn was one of three architects selected by the Association for Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums (ATALM) for their Culture Builds Communities, a multi-year program that involved training a cohort of tribal communities in the planning and design of cultural centers and museums.