A cultural center designed by architect Zara Hadid in Baku, Azerbaijani has been named the Design of the Year by London's Design Museum, despite opposition.
The Heydar Aliyev centre houses a museum, auditorium and multi-purpose hall and was described by the judges as "the pinnacle moment" in Hadid's portfolio, a piece of architecture that "should make us talk for years to come," according to The Guardian.
Oliver Wainwright at The Guardian said the building "is the most complete realisation yet of the Iraqi-born architect's vision of swooping curves and flowing space, which she brought to London's Olympic swimming pool."
But some are protesting the structure's award because of its human rights history, which Wainwright recalls in his article.
Human Rights Watch said that, along with the Crystal Hall, stage of the 2012 Eurovision song contest, and the park-cum-shopping mall of the Winter Garden, the centre is one of the city's many oil-fuelled grand projects that have seen local people evicted by force.
"The government squeezed people out by cutting off their supply of electricity, gas and water. Sometimes residents would be detained and when they came back, their homes were simply gone. Other buildings were demolished with people still in them," Giorgi Giorgia of HRW, which produced a damning report on the consequences of Baku's urban development in 2012, told The Guardian.
Nearly 250 homes were reportedly demolished to make way for the Heydar Aliyev and workings conditions during construction were extremely poor.
Hadid's practice said the contractor on the Baku project was internationally accredited by the Geneva-based inspection and verification body SGS, according to The Guardian.
Fast Company spotted some notables who took to Twitter to denounce the award, including BCC architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff and Russell Curtis, the founding director of rcka architects, won this year's Royal Institute of British Architects emerging architect award.
'Wave of protest over Hadid's Baku prizewinner' Baffling that Zaha can't see that architecture's inherently political https://t.co/q717PqTopK
— Tom Dyckhoff (@tomdyckhoff) July 1, 2014
It's naive to believe that architecture and politics are mutually exclusive: the two are inextricably linked. https://t.co/n63GnstAtJ — Russell Curtis (@russellcurtis) July 1, 2014
