Astra Zarina

Who was Astra Zarina?

Astra Zarina was an architect and professor in the University of Washington Department of Architecture. She is best known for her creation of the University of Washington Italian Studies programs and her founding of the UW Rome Center.

Zarina was born in Riga, Latvia. She came to the United States with her family after World War II and matriculated at the University of Washington in 1947. In the UW architecture program she studied under faculty including Lionel Pries, Wendell Lovett, and Victor Steinbrueck. She completed her B.Arch. in 1953. After graduation she worked in the office of Paul Hayden Kirk and married architecture classmate Douglas Haner.

Zarina moved to Boston in 1954 and entered the architecture program at MIT; her husband enrolled at Harvard. Zarina and Haner both graduated in 1955 with M.Arch. degrees and went to work in the office of Minoru Yamasaki outside Detroit.

In 1960, Zarina won the American Academy in Rome Fellowship in Architecture; she was the first woman to be awarded the Academy's architecture fellowship. She subsequently won a Fulbright fellowship for study and travel in Italy. Zarina and Haner subsequently divorced.