RESILIENCE REDUX: Astra Zarina

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Professor Emerita Astra Zarina in Civita, 1980

Women of the Mediterranean: Women and Resilience Virtual Conference The Sant’Anna Institute and College of the Holy Cross June 12th - 13th, 2021

Betty R. Torrell

© 2021 Betty R. Torrell

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 1

Photograph by John Moore, Office of Information Services, UW, Seattle, M-17302-9

I am an architect. I am also by nature a teacher.

I love to see people develop, grow, discover themselves. When I work with them, I discover things too.

Astra Zarina

Preface This paper is a continuation of my research on the life of University of Washington (UW) Professor Emerita Astra Zarina. The research is based primarily on documents from the Zarina Latona Archives, and information and documents from her husband, family, colleagues, students, and friends, whose contribution was essential, but must also add my personal experiences and observations with Astra as my professor, mentor, and friend.

This research was suggested in 2010 by Henrika Taylor at that time Interim Director of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA) and began in earnest in the summer of that year after a discussion with Zarina’s husband Anthony Costa Heywood over a glass of wine in their garden in Civita di Bagnoregio. In that same conversation we discussed the offer from the Commune di Bagnoregio for an exhibit focusing on Zarina to be housed in the Palazzo Alemanni in Civita. As a result of the conversation, I became the founding chair of the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy (NIAUSI) AZX exhibit committee, and I began in earnest to research Zarina’s life story.

Professor Emerita Astra Zarina

In 2016 with my first academic position, I found myself not only an architect but also a teacher. At that time, I begin to focus my research on an examination of her pedagogy as one critical aspect of her life and career.

I must credit Ann Hirschi, my friend, colleague, and fellow founding member of the AZX exhibit committee for her repeated suggestions to look deeper into Zarina’s life history, specifically her experiences of WWII as a Displaced Person (DP) to determine what effect this experience had on Zarina’s teaching.

As Hirschi wrote in 2013 in her student testimony as part of Zarina’s nomination for the ICAA Arthur Ross Award in Education, “What fascinates me is how the hardship of being a Displaced Person may have actually played a positive role as she evolved as a talented designer and teacher.”

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 2

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

We take resilience to be the ability to dream and to build something new, something more suitable for overcoming the obstacles that life regularly puts in our path. Resilience means not only remaining courageous in the face of change, but also seeking new opportunities for the improvement of self and society.

Women of the Mediterranean Conference CFP, 2021

Introduction – Who was Astra Zarina?

Astra Zarina

The subject of this research is the unique and innovative pedagogy of engagement and outreach employed by University of Washington (UW) Professor Emerita Astra Zarina.

Her pedagogy is a useful tool not only for the teaching of design, but also for anyone interested in enriching the student experience through the engaged learning of educational outreach as applied in both in servicebased studio projects and international studies.

Professor Zarina received the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1979 where her teaching methods inspired a generation of students who have become influential leaders in the creation of the built environment. Her colleagues and students have cited her as one of the “primary influences on their professional practice and how they see and engage with the world.”

Professor Zarina’s contribution to the professional and personal lives of her students has been recognized by academia as well as her students and practicing design professionals; however, the unique pedagogy that has made this possible is yet to be fully researched and documented.

But how did resilience contribute to her pedagogy and the influence she had on her students not only in the design studio or the foreign study experience, but also her students’ ‘personal and professional lives as lifelong learners and as influential leaders in the creation of the built environment?

As her former students continually recall her teaching as inspirational and influential, when I began my research, I looked for clues for this inspiration in her pedagogy.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 3

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1979

lI entered Professor Zarina’s design studio on my first day as an architecture student at the University of Washington, fresh off the prairies of Oklahoma. From that point in 1976, she guided me on a journey that influenced my life to this day…That period gave me the grounding for much of my professional work.

Ann Hirschi, IHT 1977

Ann Hirschi, IHT 1977

n in hundreds of buildings and spaces designed by her students, and in their own personal and professional lives well.of Agency in the Student Introduction – TheasRole Experience I first encountered Zarina as a teacher on the UW Architecture in Rome (AIR) program. One critical aspect of the AIR program she founded was the Rioni Reports. Students were assigned one of Rome’s Rioni, the traditional administrative districts in the historic center and were given approximately three weeks to investigate the architectural history and urban fabric of their Rione and create a tour for Zarina and their fellow students. To my delight I was assigned Rione XIII Trastevere (beyond the Tiber) which had a diversity and multicultural population and a reputation of a “real Roman neighborhood” and also some lesser frequented historic monuments.

One of which is the Renaissance suburban Villa Farnesina, (1506-1511) Agosto Chigi's pleasure palace with renowned frescos by Raphaël among others and elaborate terraced gardens. Discovering this, I immediately wanted to include it in my tour itinerary. The villa was not open to the public at that time. I knocked at the heavy wood front doors several times during the first week. With no response I circled the building until I found a door in the garden wall. I knocked on the garden door and to my surprise it was open by a grey-haired caretaker in a grey cardigan and the traditional blue work uniform.

Professor Emerita Zarina with Students on the UW Italian Hilltowns Program

I explained that I was a student and what I hoped to accomplish with access to the villa and gardens for my professor and fellow architecture students in the coming week, specifically next Friday at close to 4:00 pm.

Again, to my surprise, he acquiesced, and I held my breath when the class returned on Friday as we knocked at the door at the appointed time and the door in the garden wall opened. The caretaker let us in and then to our delight gave us a personal tour of the villa and gardens with his expert knowledge as caretaker for many years.

I was not the only student who gained unusual access through their agency as a student. My fellow student Charlotte Graham, whose Rione was Borgo XIV, arranged for the class to tour the Scala Regia in the Vatican, which is the stair leading from the Portone di Bronzo at the north side of St. Peter’s Square, which in turn connects to the Sistine Chapel. At that time, the Scala Regia was not open to the public. My husband Lauris Bitners arranged as part of his or his Rione Tour of Subura, a visit to a Mithraic temple below the church of San Clemente, which was also not open to the public at that time. I say this only as an example of to what extent Zarina inspired this kind of agency in her students.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 4

Becoming more resilient not only helps you get through difficult circumstances, but it also empowers you to grow and even improve your life along the way.

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

American Psychological Association, 2012

Introduction – Resilience

Professor Emerita Astra Zarina in Civita

How did Zarina’s inspiration act to create student that enhanced and enlarged the students’ work enough to considered going above the deliverables, not the exception but the rule, and create in her students’ future professionals who have had a lasting impact on the built environment, not only locally in Seattle and the USA, but internationally as well?

1,Competence –- developing a specific passion or skill 2. Confidence – having a belief in one’s abilities 3. Connection – being part of a community 4. Character – following a moral compass 5. Contribution – offering their own service 6. Coping -- disengaging when under stress 7. Control -- able to make their own decisions

When contemplating the subject of this conference, Women of the Mediterranean: Women and Resilience, the life of UW Professor Emerita Astra Zarina immediately came to mind, both with a life story as a model of resilience and a woman of the Mediterranean in many ways adopted by Italy and the Italians. Zarina found a home in Italy, where in Civita di Bagnoregio she was a resident as well as a catalyst for its renewed understanding and renewal.

We all have some knowledge or understanding of what resilience is, but what circumstances foster resilience and how is it expressed in a life? In research from Kenneth Ginsburg, resilience, for those interested in well being, is associated with the 7 C’s building blocks:

(Dabell, 2021)

To call Zarina a resilient individual is one thing, but where can we find these ‘building blocks’ empirically in Zarina’s life story and how did this resilience influence her teaching methods?

Zarina’s own resilience could be understood as a product of her experience as a WWII refugee from Latvia emigrating to the United States and eventually Italy, notwithstanding her position as an architect in a traditionally and predominantly male profession.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 5

Moments of Resilience

Alma Zarina with Vija and Astra in Riga, Latvia

Coping Professor Zarina was born in Riga, Latvia in 1929 to Eduard Zarins and Alma Zarina. In January of 1944 at the age of 15, her family received permission from the occupying Germans to leave Latvia. On June 6th, the same day as the Normandy Invasion (and also the Battle of Bagnoregio in Italy), with the Red Army advancing rapidly toward German occupied Riga, Zarina’s mother departed from Riga with the four children; the two girls Astra and Vija, and the two younger boys, Valdis and Uldis on a ship bound for Danzig. Mr. Zarins, Zarina’s father had obtained the necessary papers from the German occupation officials for the family to visit an uncle who was a violinist then in residence at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Zarina’s father was not allowed to leave Riga at that time.

The ship was in constant risk of being torpedoed by Russian submarines. They reached Danzig and then departed on a long and dangerous train journey through bombed out East Germany. Zarina remembered that alarms stopped the train many times and the passengers were made to take refuge in the woods until the danger passed of being bombed or strafed by Allied planes.

They were not allowed to stay in Salzburg, so the family continued south and settled near Weissensee, on a small lake in the mountains twenty kilometers as the crow flies from the Italian border, but much farther by road through the mountains to Traviso.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.hanneketrave ls.net%2F2012%2F02%2Fweisensee.html&psig=AOvVaw0sf8Nqn5N3uBrZd 1_Pzeb6&ust=1623598644995000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRx qFwoTCKiY_sG2kvECFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI

Betty R. Torrell -- 6

Moments of Resilience

Typical Mountain House Near Weisspnsee

Competence

Connection

From there Zarina recalled, her mother accompanied her to a village in the mountains on foot carrying a suitcase. A schoolteacher from Bremen had improvised a school in a house for a group of boys of various ages sent by their parents to escape the bombings in the north of Germany. He accepted Zarina as the only female student, and she spent the Fall and Winter there.

The house was rustic, heated by fireplaces and wood stoves. Zarina said that every morning they had to remove the ice from the washbowls before washing their faces.

Later after escaping from Riga as it fell to the Soviets, Zarina’s father found the family in Weissnsee. Life then was relatively tranquil. The sisters, Astra and Vija, would catch rides to the village with the young soldiers passing in their jeep until one day, it was a British jeep with young British soldiers. The Germans were gone.

The teacher was marvelous. However, Astra remembered the Greek lesson at noon was often canceled by alarm sirens and the drone of a multitude of Allied airplane motors of the planes flying above them on their way to bomb Vienna. The teacher taught all the courses for each age group and entertained the children in the evening around the fire playing his violin and singing with them or reading aloud.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

But life became more difficult for refugees as the war came to an end.

Zarina recalled that food became scarce, and the family ate only polenta.

Zarina’s mother was forced to purchase grain with the pieces of silverware she had brought from Latvia. Eventually the Latvian war refugees were sent to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Esslingen near Stuttgart. Zarina remembered that the journey there took three days and three nights by train freight cars.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

Betty R. Torrell

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 7

Moments of Resilience Competence In Esslingen, Zarina applied for acceptance to the School of Architecture at the Technische Universitaet in Karlsruhe and was accepted even though she was only sixteen. She rented a room with a Frau Braun. Zarina recalled that working at Frau Braun’s dining room table, she had difficulty constructing her descriptive geometry assignments. She could not obtain the proper results with her T-square and wooden triangles until a classmate discovered that the table was not a true rectangle. Zarina studied in Esslingen for most of two years.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

As evidenced by her drawings at the Technische Universitaet, her studies there included the classical architecture of Rome.

Meanwhile her father was arranging for the family to emigrate to either the United States of America, England, or Australia, the three options available.

His first choice was the United States but immigration there required a sponsor. Through the Lutheran Church he found a sponsor, the Barlow brothers who owned a sand and gravel business in Tacoma, Washington.

With this sponsorship, his immigration application was accepted in 1949

Page from Zarina’s Architectural Sketchbook at the Technische Universitaet

Coping The family sailed from Bremerhaven on a former troop ship, the S.S. General MacCrae. Zarina recalled that on board the family was separated with the men were traveling apart from the women and children. Upon arrival Zarina said she was excited to see New York which she had seen in the movies, but she had no such luck. The family went directly from immigration to Penn Station where they boarded a train for the crosscontinental trip to Tacoma. Zarina related that the transcontinental trip was long and as time passed what was seen from the windows looked less and less like her imagined New York.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

Moments of Resilience

Zarina (Right) with a Neighbor in Eatonville, Washington USA

Control The Barlow brothers had some land near Mudlake, Washington and they wanted Mr. Zarins to develop a farm there. Even through Mr. Zarins’s was by profession an economist, he had built as a hobby an experimental farm near Riga. The construction of the farm was Astra’s first encounter with construction. Thinking that there was nothing for a Latvian economist to do in the US, he had applied as a farmer on his immigration application. The land near Mudlake had recently been a forest. The trees had been clear cut and there remained only the tree stumps. There was a workhorse and an authentic log cabin. The word rustic took on new meaning.

Zarina related that along with her sister Vija and her mother she spent the first several days stuffing newspapers and cardboard in the cracks between the logs in order to make the cabin weathertight. After a few days Astra recalled that she mounted the giant workhorse without a saddle and rode off to look for another family she heard were settled not to far away.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

After some time, Mr. Zarins convinced the Barlows that transforming the stump ranch into farmland was not feasible and somehow got the family to Seattle where there were schools for the children and a Latvian community established.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 8

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 9

Moments of Resilience

Zarina on the Steps of UW Architecture Hall

Competence In Seattle, Zarina enrolled in architecture at the University of Washington with a Foreign Students scholarship in 1951.

(Zarina -- Latona House Archives, 2009).

Most of her classmates were war veterans on GI Bill scholarships. Architect Jane Hastings, a fellow student, told me in a conversation that when she heard that a young woman who was a displaced person had been accepted into the architecture school, she collected a box of clothing for her. Upon seeing Zarina on the first day, Hastings immediately hid the box under her desk, as Zarina entered the classroom impeccably dressed.

(Jane Hastings, personal communication, (2010)

During the summer vacation she worked in the art department of the Frederick and Nelson department store drawing newspaper advertisements of women’s fashions where she quickly learned the craft and new techniques that included the use of Zipatone sheets of printed patterns that could be cut and transferred by rubbing onto the sketches to indicate shade and shadow. Later she would apply these techniques as an innovation in architectural renderings.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008) She graduated from the UW with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1953. Upon graduation Zarina was given the “Faculty Award for Excellence in Design.” After graduating she worked in the office of Paul Hayden Kirk in Seattle for approximately two years. While at Kirk’s office Zarina designed residences in the developing Pacific Northwest style in postwar residential areas in and around Seattle. Paul Kirk's designs contributed to the development of a regionally appropriate version of Modern architecture.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5765 0/31494358-MIT.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Betty R. Torrell -- 10

Moments of Resilience

A Process Drawing from Zarina’s Thesis at MIT

Confidence

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

In 1954, after applying and being accepted by Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Zarina chose MIT as it had offered her a graduate fellowship. Graduating in 1954 with a master’s degree, she received the “Chamberlain Award for Best Graduate Design Project” for her thesis project, “A Ladies Apparel Shop on Boylston Street, Boston”.

The architect Minoru Yamasaki who was one of her design studio critics at MIT offered her a position in his design office outside Detroit upon graduation where she worked for four years as a project designer including on the on the Detroit School of Arts and Crafts and the First Methodist Church of Warren, Michigan, and additionally creating architectural renderings for office projects.

Zarina with Doug Haner in Yamasaki’s Reynolds Metals Building

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand.

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

Leonardo da Vinci

Adopted by Italy -- Rome

The Italian Line Leonardo Da Vinci - 1958

In 1960, Zarina applied for the American Academy in Rome Fellowship and a Fulbright grant to study in Italy. Zarina was awarded both the American Academy in Rome Fellowship, the first in the Academy’s history to be awarded to a woman in architecture, together with a Fulbright Grant for study in Italy. In late summer she traveled to New York to embark on the Italian Line Leonardo di Vinci for Rome. When she arrived at the dock, she discovered that her first passport as an American citizen had expired. This was no crisis. The ship line knew how to procure a renewal quickly in New York. They called a taxi and told her what to do, but when she returned with the passport the ship was gone.

She was told not to panic and was driven to the end of the wharf where a tugboat was waiting. The tug sailed out of the Hudson beyond the lighthouse, where the transatlantic ocean liner was waiting with passengers at the rails to see why the ship was stopped. Zarina boarded through the pilot’s door almost at water level and the ship soon departed for Naples.

(Anthony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008)

(Tony Costa Heywood, personal communication, 2008) Her friend from years following, Jose’ d’ Amely Melodie, who was coincidentally on the ship with her recalled, “My first impression was of a young lady intelligent, cultivated and elegant; I remember a late-night dinner party, Astra had on a fashionable green silk dress.”

(Jose’ d’ Amely Melodie, personal communication, 2012)

https://www.relevantsearchscotland.co.uk/ships/midsizedships/149leon ardodavinci/image003.jpg

Betty R. Torrell -- 11

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

https://www.relevantsearchscotland.co.uk/ships/midsizedships/149leon ardodavinci/image003.jpg

1

Adopted by Italy -- Rome While a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, she measured the Arch of Septimius Severus and drafted plates of the monument along with an analysis of its underlying geometry. In an interview with Professor Richard Brilliant, Professor Emeritus of Art History and Archaeology and Anna S. Garbedian Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, who was also a fellow at the American Academy at that time, he related that Zarina completed the measured drawings for the arch on scaffolding while experiencing intense vertigo, “Those drawings are the work of a dedicated if acrophobic architect, who for several weeks in rainy weather courageously ascended the slippery scaffold and made the observations which resulted in her magnificent drawings.”

(Brilliant, 1966) Zarina was able to extend her stay in Italy with the Fulbright award renewed.

As stated by Richard A. Kimball, Director of the American Academy in Rome at that time, “ She came to the Academy in 1960. As her work was very satisfactory her Fellowship was renewed for 1961-62 and what is more extraordinary, because our general policy is to keep architects here only two years, her Fellowship was renewed again for a third year 1962-63.”

(Richard A. Kimball, personal communication, Zarina Latona Archives,1964)

The Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome – Drawing by Astra Zarina

Zarina remained in Rome after her Fulbright grant expired where among other projects, she was engaged as Project Designer at Litchfield, Whiting, Bowne & Associates for the National School of Law and Administration, Leopoldville, Republic of Congo (1063) and Project Designer for the Master Plan, Housing Units, and School Chapel, for the Adventist Hospital in Benghazi, Libya (1963-1964).

(Quell, 1964).

Zarina also worked independently in Rome from her home and studio in the center of Rome on Via Stefano del Cacco, where in hands-on collaboration with friends, including brother-in-law Karlis Rekevics, she remodeled the apartment.

Here she worked on various projects including the apartments for the New Town “Maerkisches Viertel in Berlin (1963) and the Club Facilities for the U.S. Officers in Vicenza, Italy (1967) . Zarina also worked as a consulting Architect for various projects inside and outside of Italy.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo from the Zarina/Heywood Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 13

Adopted by Italy -- Rome At this time Zarina and the prolific and celebrated photographer Balthazar Korab worked on the book, “I Tetti di Roma: Le terrazze, le altane, i belvedere,” which was to be published in 1976. As John Comazzi relates, Korab, an acquaintance from Michigan, had been on a sabbatical in Florence documenting the restoration processes following the 1966 flood of the Arno. Shortly after arriving in Italy, Zarina contacted Korab to propose a collaboration surveying the “urban environment atop the roofscapes of Rome,” which became Korab’s “most ambitious and comprehensive project during his entire sabbatical in Italy.”

“In an early draft proposal for the project Korab and Zarina established a four-fold set of principles that would guide their exploration. They wrote that the roofscape should be explored in its “multiplicity: 1) in its historical context; 2) on a macro-scale, as a topographic formation; 3) on a microscale, as a conglomerate of architectural forms in in unintended and accidental relationships; and 4) as a man-made terrain, claimed and cultivated.”

I Tetti di Roma – Mock-Up of Cover They begin their project in 1966, a time when many of the rooftop apartments (Zarina’s included) were occupied by poets, artist, writers, expatriates – a bohemian counterculture that sought out the roofscapes for their spectacular setting and inexpensive rent. And so, with Zarina’s connection to the city, she and Korab finagled their way into some of the city’s most private and otherwise inaccessible spaces high above the city.”

(Comazzi, 2012)

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Betty R. Torrell -- 14

Adopted by Italy -- Rome Zarina returned to Seattle to teach as a lecturer in the UW Department of Architecture in 1965 and 1968 as the first woman professor in the department. In 1970, working with the architecture department Zarina initiated the Architecture in Rome (AIR) program holding classes for a small number of students in her apartment on Via Monserrato near the Campo dei Fiori.

The success of the first year led to the program becoming a yearly offering.

In subsequent years, the second quarter in Rome was offered as Rome II, and in 1976 the first IHT summer program in Civita di Bagnoregio was established.

Through 1983 and 1984, Professor Zarina worked with the UW Provost George Beckman and College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) Dean Gordon Varey to negotiate a lease for several floors of the historic Palazzo Pio in Rome.for a UW Rome Center..

AIR and IHT Brochure – Cover Page This Rome Center continues to serve students from a variety of UW programs and other universities. She and her husband, Tony Costa Heywood, also an architect, oversaw the design of both the instructional and residential spaces in the building, where Zarina served as the Rome Center Director from 1984 to 1994.

In 1985 Zarina received a permanent joint appointment as a professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA Astra gave everything to Civita, she dedicated her life to Civita. And it allowed life to return to the village. Ever since Astra came, interest in Civita has been reborn for Civitonici like me who had gone away and who have now returned. (Attili, 2020)

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

Sandro Rocchi

Adopted by Italy -- Civita

Civita di Bagnoregio

As Jose’ d’ Amely Melodie related, Zarina first discovered Civita when Architect Malcolm Davis, “took both of us to Civita di Bagnoregio where he wished to buy a house.” Davis had introduced Melodie to Zarina at the American Academy, although unknowingly they had already met on the ship from the United States years before. “Astra and I became friends and in 1963 we bought our houses in Civita.”

In it burned a small steady fire braced by elaborate andirons. It was the kind of fire that frugal people must build: wet and dry wood small pieces to keep it going, no logs – logs are for festivities – but prunings of chestnut and olive wood…In those moments I felt more secure that I ever remembered feeling.”

(Jose’ d’ Amely Melodie, personal communication, 2012)

Zarina proceed to buy the room and the adjacent lean-to, which was a pig stye, on the spot. This was the first of subsequent purchases of spaces adjacent to the room with the fireplace.

Zarina described her first visit to Civita, “We left at dusk, and I thought I was going to file away one more magical memory, but I found myself drawn there now and then when Malcolm wanted to stupefy another new visitor…Perhaps the fourth time I went to Civita with Malcom, and my vacationing sister Vija I was surprised by a tremendous cloudburst. My companions were nowhere near. I knocked on the nearest door and was let in by a small child who then disappeared. The space behind the impassive door seemed so dark and large that the only thing I saw at first was what seemed to be the world’s largest fireplace.

(H&G, 1974).

Since the late 1960’s Professor Zarina and her husband Anthony Costa Heywood collaborated on the restoration of numerous buildings in the ancient hill town of Civita di Bagnoregio both for themselves and for clients, including renowned architect Gunnar Birkerts who she introduced to Civita.

The restored “lo studio” of the Zarina-Heywood residences became the classroom for the IHT program and later part of the facilities for their nonprofit (NIAUSI) they established which later became known as the Civita Institute. https://www.civitainstitute.org/

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

Betty R. Torrell --15

Adopted by Italy -- Civita Though Zarina continued to teach the AIR programs in Rome, Civita grew to be central to Zarina’s lifelong association with Italy.

Zarina and Heywood worked closely with NIAUSI to add Civita di Bagnoregio to the World Monuments Fund (WMF) 2006 List of “100 Most Endangered Places” and later hosted an international symposium with the WMF and NIAUSI to address the pressing geologic and cultural sustainability issues of Civita and the nearby tuff towns as a result of their continued interest in the importance of Civita culturally.

This contribution was recognized in 2019 with the symposium, Astra Zarina e Civita di Bagnoregio, and with the dedication of a plaque in the Palazzo Alemanni and the groundbreaking for a memorial on the belvedere “Astra Zarina in Civita.”

Graphic design by Betty Torrell

Betty R. Torrell -- 16

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 17

Photo by Michel Lewallen, 1979

She had a strong character and was motivated to accomplish what she wanted to do. Astra helped the cultural, social, and intellectual development and also the economic welfare of Civita…In the first years the IHT students were paying guests of the local farm families.

Jose’ d’ Amely MelodieMelodie

Civita as the Home of the IHT Program We have postulated that resilience was an important part of Zarina’ life experience but how did this influence her pedagogy? Zarina routinely taught graduate level design studios in the UW Department of Architecture.

She also taught in the foreign study programs she developed in Rome and Civita di Bagnoregio. Although her methods were similar, we will use the IHT program in Civita as the model for her pedagogy in this presentation. To some extent what transpired on the Italian Hilltowns program in Civita was a result of the unique nexus of Zarina and Civita. (Torrell, 2019), so let’s look briefly at the context.

Zarina described the IHT program in the 1993/1994 brochure for the foreign studies programs in Civita and Rome, “The ancient hilltowns of Central Italy have for centuries attracted the attention of scholarly travelers interested in art, landscape and architecture, and the origins of western culture in general. In modern times, however, it is rare that travelers find the time to enjoy more than a glimpse of the scenery as a brief contact with the history and culture of these places.

IHT Students with Italian Host Families on the Steps of the Church of San Donato

The Italian Hilltowns Program, offered to undergraduate and graduate students in architecture and related fields, is an exception. The program is centered in Civita di Bagnoregio, a small ancient and unique town in upper Latium that has been continuously inhabited for over 2500 years. Set in a spectacular landscape, isolated from modern automobile traffic, its built form preserved, the town offers an ideal environment for study.

Civita serves as center from which students gather and evaluate information about continuity, change and conflict in relatively stable built environments of architectural and artistic value which have been subject to a variety of demographic socio-economic, cultural, and physical changes.…Students are an integral part of the population of Civita during their stay there and participate in the annual Ferragosto celebration.”

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Civita as the Home of the IHT Program Professor Giovanni Attili, Associate Professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Civil, Building, and Environmental Engineering, La Sapienza, Rome, who has studied Civita in relation to sustainable development and it’s urban and territorial systems describes the IHT program.

“The residential school imagined by Astra Zarina in Civita di Bagnoregio, in the mid-seventies, has been a collective learning laboratory that for more than 30 years, led to a massive knowledge production on the territorial fragility of Civita and, at the same time, identified unprecedented planning visions. Most of all, it contributed to a revitalization of a village that was on the brink of social atrophy. In those years Civita, in fact, was a rural village that had been threateningly abandoned because of the industrialization processes and the consequent abandonment of countryside, the primary source for the survival of its community. The political and sociological imagination of Astra and the active involvement of the dwellers who had not left the town, progressively, brought Civita into a new life cycle.”

Italian Hilltowns Students Bitners and Donato with Signora Adele, 1979

It was also described by Luciana Vergaro, Professor of Italian and a teacher of Italian courses in the IHT program and a former mayor of the Municipality of Bagnoregio with responsibility for culture between 1995 and 1999, as “was very impressed by the way of approaching teaching: ‘We were used to frontal teaching. Instead, they were involved in cooperative, confrontational and teamwork. I must say that I have learned a lot from them. From their way of life, very free and different. From their way of studying: more open and collaborative…they give us back the image of an experience in which differences become an opportunity for collective learning.

Yes, it is a historical moment in which Civita begins to open up to the world.

One moment revolutionary in which the narrow horizons of a small semiabandoned village are suddenly enlarged. It is a magical moment for Civita.

One moment which was possible to build thanks to Astra's far-sighted imagination and her ability to give a concrete translation to this imagination.”

(Attili, 2019)

(Attili, 2019)

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1979

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

Betty R. Torrell -- 18

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA I think the most important thing about her was that she was an incredibly good teacher and that the sense that she got you to open your eyes. No matter where you looked, you looked critically... We found what we thought was important, and for her that was enough.

Craig Whitaker (Torrell, 2011)

The Academic Curriculum Excerpt from a Student Project – The Civita Chair, (BRT, 1976) In addition to traditional academic lectures, the students were expected to consider ‘every moment a lesson’ from examining the ingenious shape of a kitchen cutting board in your host mother’s kitchen to the flow of a staircase descending a hilltown alleyway. Through Zarina the students were introduced to the unique patrimony of Civita. She not only shared her knowledge, but her respect for the inhabitants and their way of life; and through their example and her vision an understanding of the importance of a life well lived. This took place in the formal and informal curriculum.

The Formal Curriculum The formal curriculum consisted of individual or group student projects in Civita. Students’ research projects directly engaged with Civita and the Civitonici. Students not only documented the built environment, but also documented in each project the relationship between the built environment and the culture of Civita, a precious culture that students understood was actively disappearing. Students understood that the research for their projects was not only a learning experience but an essential way preserving a culture.

Projects were as diverse as documenting a traditional kitchen or cantine with measured drawings and photographs to excavating a cistern, or the inventory of a Civita garden. My project was a documentation of the traditional Civita Chair. There were no preconceived deliverables associated with these assignments. Students were given introductory information about the specific topic, it’s place within the broader culture of Civita and its importance of preserving its aspects of that culture. The student or student group then developed their own goals, methods, and outcomes for the projects with Zarina’s guidance.

The Informal Curriculum The informal curriculum with Zarina could be preparing and sharing a didactic dinner, students and Civitonici under the loggia in Tony and Astra’s garden, swimming at Lago Bolsena, designing and making program-logoed t-shirts, soccer in the piazza, or a campagna fieldtrip in the valley….

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 20

The revolution wrought by Astra refers to both contents and forms. Her laboratory of learning manages to consolidate new ways of exchange and learning intercultural, hitherto unknown.

Giovanni Attili

Photo by Lauris Bitners

Giovanni Attili

The Non-Academic Curriculum

Italian Hilltowns Students with Civitonici and Family for Sunday Dinner

Students were immersed in the culture, not only by living with their Civita host families, but also actively participating in the daily life of the village.

This informal curriculum was a two-way street, which we as students were not completely aware of initially but became evident as the program progressed and which Attili describes in his research.

The students also participated in cultural events including festivals and celebrations by writing and preforming a melodrama play for la festa, practicing and preforming the madrigal “Non Vidi Mai” in the church, making and launching a pallone, participating in the infioriati and religious processions, sewing a banner as a prize for the palio.

“It's like a new way of inhabiting the village took shape alongside the ancient: the experiment is particularly interesting because it shows that outsiders can settle in a place not by strangers but living in it in turn next door to the ancient inhabitants, in a fruitful exchange the habits of life.”

As Attili relates, On August 15th, (the Latin Catholic Feast of the Assumption) students perform in the church square staging theater and music performances. It is a day of celebration. A day that the Civitonici have always lived as their own. But a day that becomes suddenly "Astra Student Day". This is how Rossana (Medori) remembers it. In her words there is no sense of expropriation. Rather deep gratitude for that practice of reinvention in which the rite is re-inhabited and carried again to life. A presentified rite in which Civitonici mingle with students in an intertwining of intentions in which they challenge, cooperate, imagine, and plan. The same rituals acquire a new meaning because their protagonists are different. The one that it is built in the summer months is a porous, enlarged community, grafted by transitory presences: a process with impermanent characteristics which, however, stratifies over time with a new possibilities of co-existence.”

(Attili, 2019) The informal curriculum with the Civitonici was dependent on each individual student actively engaging with their host families or others in the village and this could be cooking, running an errand to the cantina for your host mother, shopping trips into Bagnoregio, excursions to chestnut grove, laundry day at the lavanderia, sitting in the piazza, going to church, climbing the bell tower with Father Domenico, or a beer at il Forno with your host father….

(Attili, 2019)

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Italian Hilltowns Student Testimony

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

© IHT/Professor Astra Zarina

Photos by Betty Torrell–Architecture +

Betty R. Torrell -- 21

Signore Zefferino Medori with Lupeta at His Casetta in the Country

It was in Civita that Astra introduced me and the other students to…learning by directly engaging with the patrimony of the ancient cultures that formed such a rich environment for all types of human activity. Not just the architecture, but the agriculture, food, art, literature, and music.

Photo by Lauris Bitners

The impact of her brilliant, passionate and insightful teaching have carried me to this day, inspiring my work in architecture, urban design and planning as well as my appreciation of history, culture and life.

David Boyd, AIA, IHT Alumnus (Torrell, 2014)

Italian Hilltowns Students Making Pasta for Sunday Dinner

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 22

Photos by Betty Torrell–Architecture +

Italian Hilltowns Student Testimony

Photo from the Zarina Latona Archives

Not only did she introduce me to the architectural wonders of Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria and beyond, she showed how architecture is connected to place, traditions and people.

Our experience living with a family (Mario and Domenica) in Civita di Bagnoregio, washing our clothes in the town’s fontana, preparing and eating fried zucchini blossoms from Astra’s garden, singing in San Donato gave me a fuller understanding of architecture and urbanism than any class I’ve ever taken.

Professor David Goble Ph.D., IHT ’79 (Torrell, 2014)

Signora Domenica Medori at the Fireplace in the Sala Grande

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Italian Hilltowns Student Testimony

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

© IHT/Professor Astra Zarina

Photos by Betty Torrell–Architecture +

Betty R. Torrell -- 23

Costa Heywood, IHT Student Morteo and Zarina with Civitonici in the Street

She taught me how to look at urban structure and how to pay attention to historical layers. But she also taught me about literature and music. And, moreover, the way architecture is always the result of arts and behaviors; architecture as a human scene, history as a heritage to preserve carefully while we are looking to the future.

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

She taught me about masterpieces, but also about mistakes and illusions. She taught me that we are not only made by our brain, but by instinct and pleasure. She taught me to appreciate everything growing, because that is how the future happens.

Enrico Morteo, Architect, IHT Student ’79, IHT Teaching Assistant ’80 (Torrell, 2014)

IHT Student Donato and Bean at the Student Project Presentations

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Italian Hilltowns Student Testimony

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

© IHT/Professor Astra Zarina

Photos by Betty Torrell–Architecture +

Betty R. Torrell --24

Civitonici Luigi and Vittoria Medori with IHT students Bitners and Lewellen

I entered Professor Zarina’s design studio on my first day as an architecture student at the University of Washington, fresh off the prairies of Oklahoma. From that point in 1976, she guided me on a journey that has influenced my life to this day.

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

It did not take me long before I had signed up for the Italian Studies program she conceived and directed during the summer and fall of 1977; first in the hilltown of Civita di Bagnoregio and then in Rome.

That period gave me the grounding for much of my professional work.

Ann Hirschi, Architect, IHT ’79 (Torrell, 2014)

IHT Student Donato and Civitonici in the Piazza

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 25

Experiential learning describes the ideal process of learning, invites you to understand yourself as a learner, and empowers you to take charge of your own learning and development.

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1980

“What Is Experiential Learning?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Zarina’s Pedagogy of Experiential Learning

The Soccer Game -- IHT Students with Civitonici and Zarina and Costa Heywood

As an academician, I have become interested in the role of student agency in student achievement, and it has come to my attention that Zarina’s teaching methods can be considered a valuable case study for the role of agency in her students. References to the role of agency is found again and again in how her students describe her teaching methods and her influence on them.

Much of Zarina’s teaching methods, which could be now described and cataloged under the broad umbrella of Constructivist Learning Theory: Experiential Learning (ExL), Applied Learning, Collaborative Learning, Authentic Learning, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Reflection, were applied within the curriculum of the IHT program long before the tenets of these became universally commonplace in design higher education.

There are a number of instructional theories in which student agency is central to student success and it is not a coincidence that Zarina’s teaching methods employed many of these active learning methods under the larger umbrella of Constructivist Learning Theory, “Constructivism is the theory that says learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information. As people experience the world and reflect upon those experiences, they build their own representations and incorporate new information into their pre-existing knowledge (schemas).”

Although many of these methods overlap, let us examine one of these -Experiential Learning (ExL).“Experiential Learning refers to a pedagogy developed by Aristotle In The Nicomachean Ethics, he famously states: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

(“Constructivism,” 2020)

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Photo by Betty R. Torrell, 1976

Betty R. Torrell -- 26

Zarina’s Pedagogy of Experiential Learning

Italian Hilltowns 1976 Students with Civitonici on the Steps of San Donato

Experiential Learning is a process of education through experience, followed by reflection on that experience. Experiential learning is part of the larger category of active learning, because it directly involves students in the process of their own learning.”

And in addition to these, in ExL the learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience. Experiential Learning invites the student to “take charge”, that is become the agent of their own learning. ”It is rooted in a theory of learning that affirms all major aspects of active learning, usefully accounting for an array of individual and ... culturally derived ... differences”

(“Experiential Learning,” n.d.)

There are four elements, described as pillars, involved in Experiential Learning in real-life contexts, leaning by doing, learning through projects, and learning by solving problems.

(Anderson and Adams 1992,25)

(Knobloch, 2003)

Students on the IHT program in Civita were involved through active learning in all four pillars of ExL: real-life contexts, learning by doing, learning through projects, and learning by solving problems.

As you can see from the definitions above, and the four elements of Experiential Learning, Zarina's pedagogy for IHT can be seen as a model for Experiential Learning.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 27

Over the long arc of a distinguished teaching career, both in the U.S. and Italy, Astra Zarina influenced thousands of students who continue to benefit from her inspiring passion and genius for architecture, Italy and education.

Photo by Michael Lewallen

Daniel S. Friedman, Past Dean of the UW Department of Architecture and Urban Planning

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Conclusion

IHT 1979 with Civitonici at the Levanderia

Referring to the original definition of resilience, we can postulate that Zarina’s life experiences gave her the resilience not only for “ remaining courageous in the face of change, but also seeking new opportunities for the improvement of self and society.” This courage in the face of change carried Zarina through her experiences as a displaced person to an emigrant in the United States and her return to Italy as a researcher, author, and university professor. And as she became a resident of Civita this courage supported her in developing the teaching methods she employed in the IHT Program with a curriculum focusing on preserving the patrimony of Civita.

Photo by Betty Torrell

But how did this contribute to student agency? The realization on the part of the student for the value of their research toward preserving Civita’s patrimony was the fuel and Zarina’s teaching methods were the vehicle that created the agency in the students as the students came to understand that their academic work on the IHT program in Civita was an essential part of preserving what they had become to respect and cherish.

Civitonici Medori at the Festa

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 28

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Postscript

Photo by Balthazar Korab

Betty R. Torrell, 1980

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Hearth in the Sala Grande – Zarina with the Korab Family and Henry Smith-Miller

The Merriam Webster dictionary states that “In Latin, redux (from the verb reducere) means "to lead back“ or can mean "brought back" or "bringing back."

Photo Courtesy of Zarina Family Archives

The Romans used redux as an epithet for the Goddess Fortuna with its "bringing back" meaning; Fortuna Redux was "one who brings another safely home.“ (Merriam Webster, n.d.)

It could be said that for Zarina, her resilience did bring her back to a place she adopted as home and where she was adopted as a daughter of Civita as the residents came to consider her one of them.

Zarina with the Fireplace in the Sala Grande

Betty R. Torrell -- 29

Photo by Lauris Bitners

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Appreciation

Signore Gessuina and Zefferino Medori with their students Torrell and Peterson

I started my research in Civita on the first IHT program with the documentation of the Civita Chair, a traditional chair form found in Civita.

When opening my project while researching for this paper, I found my thank you to those I worked with on the project, including Signore Fernandino Crochone, the chair maker.

I would like to thank Elizabeth Rekevics, Karl Rekevics, and Carmen Gudz, Zarina’s nieces and nephew, for access to the Zarina Latona House Family Archives and their personal photo albums for documents and photographs, as well as their continued support for the Astra Zarina Monograph project.

The thanks I expressed then still are valid today in terms of my research: Working with Signore Crochone was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me that would have not been possible without employing my agency as a student of Zarina’s.

I will never forget my Italian host parents Zefferino and Gessuina Medori or the way they created a place for me “come una figlia” in their home and creating in me a desire to tell the story that is Civita.

And the inspiration that was Astra continues to fuel my work.

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 30

Reference List Anderson, J. A., & Adams, M. (1992). Acknowledging the learning styles of diverse student populations: Implications for instructional design. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1992(49), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.37219924904 Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, Deepening and Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied Learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(Fall), 25–48.

Astra Zarina. (2008). Retrieved June 4, 2021, from https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?n=astra-zarina&pid=119005610

Attili, G. (2019). La Scuola di Astra Zarina a Civita di Bagnoregio. Una sfida contro l’abbandono. Scienze Del Territorio, 7, 199–127. https://doi.org/10.13128/sdt-10957 Attili, G. (2020). Civita, senza aggetti e senza altre specificazioni. Macerata, Italy: Quolibet slr.

Berg, V. M., Paige, M. R., & Lou, K. H. (2012). Student Learning Abroad: What Our Students Are Learning, What They’re Not, and What We Can Do About It (Illustrated ed.). Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing.

Brown, E. (2017, June 7). 6 Advantages of Collaborative Learning _Online Education_ezTalks_Video Conferencing, Webinar, Online Meeting, Screensharing Tips and

Reviews. Retrieved May 31, 2021, from https://eztalks.com/online-education/6-advantages-of-collaborative-learning.html Civita di Bagnoregio. (1974). House & Garden Remodeling Guide, (Spring), 116–216.

Comazzi, J. (2012). Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography (First Tion ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press.

Constructivism. (2020, December 8). Retrieved May 31, 2021, from http://www.buffalo.edu/ubcei/enhance/learning/constructivism.html Crosta, P. L. (1998). Politiche quale conoscenza per l’azione territoriale. Milano, Italy: Franco Angeli.

Demirbaş, O., & Demirkan, H. (2003). Focus on architectural design process through learning styles. Design Studies, 24(5), 437–456 .

https://doi.org/10.1016/s0142-694x(03)00013-9

Experiential Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved May 30, 2021, from https://tophat.com/glossary/e/experiential-learning/ The 7 Cs of Resilience. Retrieved June 9, 2021, from https://johndabell.com/2018/05/01/the-7-cs-of-resilience/

RESILIENCE REDUX: ASTRA ZARINA

Betty R. Torrell -- 31

Reference List Knobloch, N. A. (2003). Is Experiential Learning Authentic? Journal of Agricultural Education, 44(4), 22–34. https://doi.org/10.5032/jae.2003.04022 Mcleod, S. (2019, July 17). Constructivism as a Theory for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved June 1, 2021, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/constructivism.html Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (Eds.). (2006). Threshold concepts and transformational learning -- Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and Practice. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Redux. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redux Rome, American Academy in. (1967). Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Neuilly sur Seine, France: Ulan Press.

Shaffer, P. (2008). Constructivist Learning Design: Key Questions for Teaching to Standards – By George W. Gagnon Jr. and Michelle Collay. Teaching Theology & Religion, 11(3), 167. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2008.00436.x Stepien, W., & Gallagher, S. (1993). Problem-based learning: As authentic as it gets. Educational Leadership, 50(7), 25–29.

SUNY. (n.d.). Common Definitions of Applied Learning. Retrieved May 30, 2021, from https://www.suny.edu/applied-learning/about/definitions/ Welch, J. (1965). Architects Given First Women Prof. Seattle Times, p. Unknown.

What Is Experiential Learning? (n.d.). Retrieved May 30, 2021, from https://experientiallearninginstitute.org/resources/what-is-experiential-learning/

The Civita Chair – Measured Drawings by Betty Torrell