Architect and professor at the University of California Berkeley from 1948 to 1978. Czaja received a master's degree in architecture from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1936. After graduation, he worked in the offices of Antonin Raymond and Eliel and Eero Saarinen. From 1942-43, Czaja was a member of the editorial board of Task magazine, an avant garde student publication with issues published in turn by various universities. Czaja used a photograph of Gropius and Breuer's Aluminum City Terrace defense housing project on the first page of a 1943 article about war housing written by Catherine Bauer. Czaja was also a member of Telesis, a group of socially concerned architects, landscape architects, planners and designers whose numbers included Bauer and her husband William Wurster.