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Design Museum of London held a ceremony last night in a five-star London hotel to announce the Design of the Year award. The six-member jury gave the prize to a building designed by famous architect Zaha Hadid and named for a dictator—the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, in Baku, Azerbaijan, reports Michael Silverberg in his article in the “Quartz” business edition.

According to the author Hadid’s client is Ilham Aliyev, an autocrat president just like his late father, Heydar Aliyev. His regime presides over a regime of corruption and human rights abuses. In October last year the younger Aliyev won a third five-year term as president with an improbable 84.6% of the vote.

“For Hadid, the project “offered the rare opportunity of nearly total design freedom.” But that freedom apparently didn’t extend beyond the architect. But that freedom apparently didn’t extend beyond the architect. While the center was being built, the Guardian reports, migrant workers from Bosnia and Serbia were “forced to work in Baku in appalling conditions, subjected to physical and psychological violence, with their passports confiscated,” the article reads.

Silverberg also notes that the Azerbaijani government forcibly evicted residents and demolished hundreds of homes to make way for the 619,000-square-foot center.

Human Rights Watch has documented similar abuses in other Baku development projects as the government spends $6 billion a year trying to position the capital city as “a destination for the rich and fabulous,” the author writes.