In the first volume of our new series She Was an Architect, journalist and art historian Laura Helena Wurth vividly recounts the fascinating life of American-Italian architect Astra Zarina: born in Riga in 1929, her life spans Seattle and Rome. In 1960, she became the first woman to win the American Academy's Rome Prize for Architecture. Although she had previously been involved in the planning of the modernist Märkisches Viertel district in Berlin, she subsequently moved to Rome and concentrated on training architects and preserving buildings. She began restoring old historic houses in Civita di Bagnoregio, an abandoned hill town north of Rome. In 1970, she launched the Washington University Rome Program, which enabled young students to study in Rome. Partially unpublished photographs from Zarina's estate and the Civita Institute Foundation provide insight into Astra Zarina's winning personality, which her former student Steven Holl also raves about in an interview. In a holistic approach that is highly relevant today, her main concern was to inspire young students with Italy's building culture and way of life: “If you want to be an architect, first you have to learn how to cook!”
