Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1927, Dworsky lived in the Twin Cities and Sioux Falls, South Dakota before attending the University of Michigan.

[2] Dworsky won a total of six varsity letters at Michigan, four in football and two in wrestling where he competed in the heavyweight division.

"[7] After going undefeated and winning the Big Ten championship, Michigan was invited to Pasadena to face the USC Trojans in the 1948 Rose Bowl—the Wolverines' first bowl game since 1901.

Dworsky played center during the Rose Bowl, blocking USC's All-American tackle (and future Los Angeles city councilman), John Ferraro.

The defensive unit led by Dworsky held its opponents to just 4.9 points per game, including shutouts against Oregon (14–0), Purdue (40–0), Northwestern (28–0), Navy (35–0), and Indiana (54–0).

1 by the AP, but Big Ten Conference rules prohibited a team from playing in the Rose Bowl two years in a row.

[7] In 1949, Dworsky was the first round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference.

Dworsky played linebacker and blocking back for the Dons and had one interception and one kick return for 14 yards.

[11] The AAFC disbanded after the 1949 season, and Dworsky turned down an offer from the Pittsburgh Steelers to return to the University of Michigan where he graduated in 1950 with a degree in architecture.

Dworsky Associates won the 1984 Firm of the Year Award from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects.

[14] Dworsky belongs to the generation of post-World War II modernists that took its cues from the 1920s German Bauhaus and the French-Swiss master Le Corbusier.

[13] Asked what inspires his architecture, Dworsky said he draws from the "solid, resolved concepts" of modern designers such as Le Corbusier and Marcel Bruer, while being encouraged on occasion to experiment by such "new wave" designers as Frank Gehry and Eric Owen Moss.

[15] Dworsky's first major commission was to design a basketball arena for his alma mater, the University of Michigan.

The members of the 1947 Michigan Wolverines football team had reunions with Fritz Crisler every five years in Ann Arbor,[7] and it was at one of those reunions that Crisler (by then the school's athletic director) gave Dworsky one of his big breaks, asking him to design the arena.

Dworsky's design of the arena was well received and was said to demonstrate "his ability to combine majesty of scale with human accessibility".

Dworsky designed a yellow "Block M" for the stands on the eastern side of the stadium, just above the tunnel.

[17] After his work on Crisler Arena, Dworsky was commissioned by UCLA to design a track and field stadium on the university's central campus.

Dworsky was selected to translate Gehry's conceptual designs into working drawings that would meet building code specifications.

Gehry publicly blamed Dworsky: "The executive architect was incapable of doing drawings that had this complexity.

[21] Gehry was also quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "We had the wrong executive architect doing the drawings.

""[22] Gehry told Los Angeles magazine in 1996 that he "no longer speaks to his former friend (Dworsky)".

"[23] Dworsky was eventually told to stop working on the drawings before he completed them,[23] but he defended himself against Gehry's criticism.