Location: Chapel, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, Google Maps

Hatje Cantz and CCA cordially invite you to the presentation of the first volume of the new series She Was an Architect. Journalist and author Laura Helena Wurth tells the extraordinary story of American-Italian architect Astra Zarina (1929–2008) in Astra Zarina – Lessons on Continuity and Change, whose work unfolded between Riga, Seattle, Berlin, and Rome.

In 1960, Zarina became the first woman to win the Rome Prize of the American Academy for Architecture. Although she had previously been involved in the planning of the modernist Märkisches Viertel in Berlin, she subsequently moved to Rome and focused from then on on the education of architects and the preservation of buildings. She began restoring old historic houses in Civita di Bagnoregio, an abandoned hilltop village north of Rome. In 1970, she established the Rome Program of Washington University, which makes it possible for young students to spend time in Rome. Partly unpublished photographs from Zarina's estate and the Civita Institute foundation offer an insight into Astra Zarina's winning personality, which her former student Steven Holl also enthuses about in an interview. In what is today a highly relevant, holistic approach, her primary concern was to inspire young students with Italian building culture and way of life: "If you want to be an architect, first you have to learn how to cook!"

The new series She Was an Architect is dedicated to forgotten and overlooked female architects of the 20th century and asks how their ways of working can open up new perspectives on architecture and sustainability.