The Grace Farms Lecture | Sharon Prince

Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, will inspire you to see the built environment through new eyes and recognize your own agency in creating spaces that communicate and catalyze good in the world. During this lecture Prince will share her remarkable journey of creating a boundary-defying environment that doesn’t just exist—it actively drives humanitarian outcomes and reshapes our approach to global challenges. Her thesis has already begun to redefine how we think about architecture’s role in creating a more just and equitable world.

About Sharon Prince

Sharon Prince is the CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, a new kind of boundary-defying public space that advances good locally and globally. Prince commissioned Pritzker Prize-winning SANAA architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa to design Grace Farms, which has become widely known as a global humanitarian and cultural center located in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Grace Farms is the platform for the Foundation and its interdisciplinary humanitarian mission to pursue peace through nature, arts, justice, community, faith, and Design for Freedom, a global new movement to eliminate forced labor from the building materials supply chain. The open, porous architecture of the River building at Grace Farms is embedded into 80 acres of natural biodiverse landscapes. The building, designed to break down barriers between people and sectors, invites all to pause and reflect, while also encouraging engagement with Grace Farms’ work, including advancing gender and racial equity, all of which leads to creating new outcomes.

Since opening, Grace Farms has garnered numerous prestigious awards for contributions to architecture, environmental sustainability, and social good, including the AIA National 2017 Architecture Honor Award and the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize.

Grace Farms is pioneering a new form of philanthropic capitalism with a non-profit owned certified B Corp. Prince is the Co-Founder of Grace Farms Tea & Coffee which offers coffees and teas that demonstrate what the Foundation advocates for: ethical and sustainable supply chains. 100% of the profits from Grace Farms Foods supports the Design for Freedom movement to eliminate forced labor from the building materials supply chain. Learn more about Sharon Prince.

Schedule:

3 – 3:45 pm

Sharon Prince Delivers Grace Farms Lecture

3:45 – 4 pm
Tea & Coffee Break

4 – 5 pm
Responsive Music Performance by Canadian Cellist, Arlen Hlusko, Grace Farms Artist-in-Residence

Begin your Grace Farms Lecture experience with a Rest House Project Workshop, led by Slade Architecture from 1:30 – 2:30 pm on Saturday, January 10th. Register separately.

Grace Farms Lectures

Grace Farms Lectures recognize visionary leaders who have profoundly elevated human flourishing throughout their lives and distinguished careers. For the past decade, Grace Farms has welcomed international thought leaders and artistic luminaries including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege. By bringing these transformative thinkers and creators together, Grace Farms continues to inspire meaningful dialogue and bold action toward a more just and peaceful world.

“This program is designed to be an epic Grace Farms experience, with music curated for each lecture by artist-in-residence, Arlen Hlusko, and a reception. An optional workshop connecting with each topic will also provide a way to engage with the lecture material in a tactile way.” – Chelsea Thatcher, Grace Farms Creative Director