Grace Farms Lectures | 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 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 featuring chamber musicians Jennifer Frautschi, Vijay Gupta, Michelle Ross & Blake Pouliot, violins; Ayane Kozasa & Melissa Reardon, violas; Arlen Hlusko & Nina Lee, cellos; Lizzie Burns, bass; Pallavi Mahidhara, piano; Emi Ferguson, flute; Yoonah Kim, clarinet; Monica Ellis, bassoon

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 bring together visionary leaders who have shaped our world, inviting them to share the wisdom they have learned through their distinguished careers. Each lecture is accompanied by a specially curated 60-minute concert performed by some of today’s most celebrated musicians. The pieces performed by these artists respond directly to the life’s work of each lecturer and the impact they continue to make.

This program is designed as an epic Grace Farms experience, with 60 minutes of music curated for each lecture by Artist-in-Residence Arlen Hlusko to enhance the message of the Lectures. An optional workshop connecting with each topic also provides a way to engage with the lecture material in a tactile way.