The result of the public vote to scrap Foster + Partners' partially built airport for Mexico City has not gone down well among local architects, who have described the referendum as an example of the country's "political issues and corruption".
A host of architects based in the Mexican capital have spoken out about the decision, which president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrado declared binding after the referendum he called took place earlier this week.
70 per cent of participants in vote favour of cancelling the $13 billion New Mexico City International Airport midway through its construction, but only one in every 90 registered voters took part.
"The outcome confirms Mexico is lacking democratic processes," architect Fernanda Canales told Dezeen. "It's an example that reveals projects in Mexico are based on short-term, personal and political issues and corruption." "It was not a public referendum, it was fake, completely against the law," she added. "The Supreme Court should approve it and the National Electoral Institute should be in charge. Instead, it was not a transparent process."
The Mexico City New International Airport, designed by British firm Foster + Partners and Mexican studio Fernando Romero Enterprise (FR-EE), was initiated by outgoing Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party.
It was not a transparent processFernanda Canales
López Obrado made the publ...