Independent Studio Azarai Hernandez

Independent Studio: Azarai Hernandez

The Green Heart of Pepillo Salcedo: Aligning community, environment, and economy, while acknowledging and retrofitting the post-industrial heritage and driver of the identity of a border town.

Pepillo Salcedo is a town on the northern Atlantic coast of Hispaniola Island, situated in the Dominican Republic at the border with Haiti, surrounded by delicate ecosystems such as the largest mangrove habitats in the DR and an estuary of a river. The town was developed as a Company Town at the beginning of the XX Century to process the products from the largest banana plantation in the Caribbean basin and export them to the USA. The company shut down over 60 years ago, leaving the town without an economic source. To address this issue and enhance Dominican presence at the border with Haiti, the government has planned significant national investments, including the enlargement of the port to handle modern ships and the construction of a natural gas power plant to meet the country's energy demand. It should be noted that the government also decided to carry out the construction of a border wall.