In 2017, seven years after the earthquake that destroyed the historic building of the National Palace in Haiti, a major international architecture competition was launched and the winners were announced on January 12, 2020. But some of the contest participants denounce the opacity of the process.
Despite the renown of the winning team of Cassandre Méhu, supported by the great British architect David Adjaye, the fact that the Haitian people do not have access to the jury’s report and therefore to the issues of qualitative judgment poses many democratic problems.
Journalist Widlore Mérancourt, of the online media Ayibopost, a critical platform for popularizing public issues, consulted Jean-Pierre Chupin on certain aspects of this process. For Jean-Pierre Chupin, the communication of the jury’s report is essential. “In a competition, the jury literally embodies the company for which we want to design and build the best project […] There is therefore no reason to hide this or that aspect of the judgment”.