Since the beginning, our Justice Initiative’s focus has been to address modern slavery. Out of that work, intersecting with our expertise in architecture and design, grew the Design for Freedom movement.
Design for Freedom
Launched in 2020, the Design for Freedom movement has convened an expanding group of innovative leaders who have committed their expertise and means to build a more equitable future by reimagining architecture as a powerful driver of humanitarian outcomes.
Within a short time, Design for Freedom and its Working Group has raised global awareness and created institutional responses through international Pilot Projects including Black Chapel by Theaster Gates (21st Serpentine Pavilion, U.K.), Nina Cooke John’s Harriet Tubman Monument (Newark, NJ), and The Brij (Delhi, India), as well as high-level events such as the annual Design for Freedom Summit and Grace Farms’ new exhibit With Every Fiber.
Summits, Workshops, and University Involvement
Every year at Grace Farms, hundreds of leaders of the built environment convene to reaffirm their commitments to the Design for Freedom movement and stand together to issue a call to action.
We are also actively engaging with students and universities to equip the next generation of leaders to include fair labor inputs into their new and existing means, methods, and processes in order to create transparency and a more equitable future.
Pilot Projects
As early adopters of Design for Freedom, Pilot Project teams accelerate the movement by raising awareness of the pressing humanitarian issue of forced labor in the building materials supply chain.
Together, Grace Farms Foundation and these Pilot Projects are modeling transparent and forced labor free supply chains and demonstrating design principles in action by creating a tangible example of a more humane built environment. Spanning the U.S., the U.K., and India, each of these projects is, or will be, open and accessible to the public.
Ethical Supply Chains
Grace Farms Foods, a public benefit LLC and a Certified B Corp, demonstrates ethical and sustainable supply chains and invites people to participate in the humanitarian work of Grace Farms. Grace Farms is the first and only US-based tea brand to partner with Fairtrade International to source ingredients that support sustainable development for certified partners. Grace Farms also sources coffee exclusively from women-led co-ops and enterprises that support gender equality and opportunity.
Exhibit and Resources
In May 2024, With Every Fiber, a new exhibit designed by Studio Cooke John, with Pentagram, offering cross-sector insights into the Design for Freedom movement, will open at Grace Farms. A space for both education and contemplation, the exhibit features innovative solutions, including a tapestry of bio-based materials designed by the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture, alongside contributions from poets, photographers, theologians, and others who remind us to consider the relationships inherent in the questions central to Design for Freedom: where do our building materials come from and are they made with fair labor?
With Every Fiber builds on resources like the Design for Freedom Report, a comprehensive report designed to raise awareness about slave labor in the built environment and propose an industry-wide call to action, and the Design for Freedom Toolkit, which provides a means and method for incorporating material transparency and circular value, and for prioritizing ethical selection and procurement on any construction, interiors, or landscape project, as well as in all material libraries.
people will interact with Design for Freedom Pilot Projects that are free and open to the public
students engaged with Design for Freedom through lectures at colleges and universities
curated exhibits at Grace Farms used Design for Freedom Principles
Leveraging our shared values, collective action, and diverse expertise, we continue to build new pathways towards effective interventions, while energizing a global coalition to help us rise to this monumental challenge. Below is a timeline of our annual Justice milestones.
2017
Developed a media campaign in partnership with WPP’s J. Walter Thompson and Geometry Global to communicate the global issue of modern slavery in a new way. This anti-trafficking campaign would initiate new ways of raising awareness around modern slavery.
