Born in 1951, Doina Marilena Ciocănea graduated in architecture in 1976. Upon graduation, she received a position at the Institute for Design and Construction in Agriculture and Food Industry, where she remained for eleven years. There, she developed designs for warehouses, preserves factories, wineries, slaughterhouses, flour mills, and bakeries to be built throughout the country. 

Ciocănea worked as an architect during the construction of the Palace of the People, built in Bucharest by the Carpathian Design Institute between 1987 and 1990 after the project by Anca Petrescu. When this institute was closed in the aftermath of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s fall, she became chief architect in private offices, PREDA (1992-1994) and MACONZ International Ltd., designing private houses and apartments. She subsequently developed an interest in urban planning, receiving a master degree in urban planning from the UNESCO-Cousteau Department of Ecology at the University of Bucharest in 1994. In 1996, Ciocănea received a scholarship to study politics and ecology in Madrid. Around the same time, she started her own practice, offering ecological consulting services to the city of Bucharest.

Ciocănea has been engaged in improving working conditions for Romanian women-architects. She is a member the International Union of Women-Architects (L’Union Internationale des Femmes Architectes, UIFA) and of the Professional Women’s Club of Romania (ProFEM). 

Ciocănea’s archive is available at the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) at Virginia Tech (USA): https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/57314; https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv00587.xml&doc.view=print;chunk.id=