The winning canopy design submitted by British architect Norman Foster in a 2001 competition for the West Kowloon arts and cultural hub was among 12 designs disqualified for technical reasons.
According to people familiar with the selection process, jury chairman Lord Rothschild had said he wanted to include all disqualified entries in the shortlisting preview.
The claim was supported by confidential documents on the troubled contest disclosed by the government last Friday under lawmakers' pressure, as the contest is now at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row involving chief executive candidate Leung Chun-ying.
Legco today will debate whether to invoke the Powers and Privileges Ordinance to force a full disclosure of the West Kowloon documents to find out more about how Foster's design won, as well as Leung's conflict of interest issue.
Professor Chang Hsin-kang, former president of City University who served as a fellow juror, said the jury chairman's handling of the selection process had been 'unsettling' to him over the years. He declined to say if Foster's design was initially disqualified. But he said 'there was indeed a disqualified entry that made it to the final round' and that the initial rejection of that scheme was due to its need for reclamation.
'It has never stopped perplexing me as to why the coincidence was so strong,' he said. 'One disqualified by the technical panel ended up getting into the final round,' which had nine finalists.