2016, Alicia Pozniak

ALICIA POZNIAK (M.Arch ’16)

Confession, revelation, celebration and confusion: I had a ‘Zaha phase’. You couldn’t tell looking at my current YSOA work. It feels strange to say it now that she is gone and we are all reeling from the suddenness of her departure. In the moments after hearing the news, I rummaged through my hard-drive to be reminded of her visible influence on my early undergrad work: shape-shifting, ground-peeling, swooping, bending, splitting elements. This was the ultimate language or ‘calligraphy’ (as she had called it) to react against the banal ‘Frampton validated regionalism meets international style’ corporatized Sydney architecture in early 2000’s. I got hooked on Landscape Formation One and Vitra Fire Station. Perhaps this was a dangerous entry into architecture; smooth, seductive, immersive, difficult to shake and complex as hell to work with non-Cartesian geometries pre-Rhino.  But from her work I learned composition, proportion and a way to make architecture move you through space.