With Every Fiber | Long-Term Exhibition

About | Virtual Exhibit | Interview with Exhibit Designer, Nina Cooke John

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First the food industry was called to be accountable to fair labor and supply chain transparency, then fashion, and now shelter is being called into account.

Sharon Prince, Grace Farms CEO and Founder

With Every Fiber

designed by Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, with Pentagram

curated by Grace Farms Creative Director Chelsea Thatcher

on view, Grace Farms West Barn

With Every Fiber is a long-term exhibition aiming to inspire understanding and care about the materials that make up the built world around us. In 2020, Grace Farms launched Design for Freedom, a collaborative global movement to eliminate forced labor in the building materials supply chain, create true market transformation, and build a more equitable future. This exhibit is Grace Farms’ first major initiative to bring this movement to the public.

This immersive and interactive exhibit is the result of collaboration and contributions from 20 preeminent designers, material suppliers, cultural institutions, and construction industry leaders already committed to the Design for Freedom movement. It features a curated recording by a quartet of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, poetry by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, text by artist Carrie Mae Weems, and photography by international humanitarian photographer Lisa Kristine – artists who have all contributed at various stages of the movement to draw attention to the ethical layers of this cause.

With Every Fiber also features an immersive biomaterials installation by Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA) emphasizing the relationship between culture and sustainability and bringing forth the concept of ethical decarbonization, a new term proposed by Grace Farms CEO and Founder Sharon Prince with Anna Dyson, founder of Yale CEA.

Chelsea Thatcher, exhibit curator, Chief Strategy Officer, and Founding Creative Director of Grace Farms

This exhibit is a dynamic environment set within the context of Grace Farms, in which people from around the world can pause and consider the hands making our building materials. With Every Fiber is a composition of collaboration; it weaves together the agency each of us has to design a more humane future for all.

Virtual Experience

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About Nina Cooke John

Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design

Nina Cooke John, Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, was one of the first architects in the U.S. to commit to embarking on a Design for Freedom Pilot Project. She tracked materials for fair labor in Shadow of a Face, a public monument celebrating the life of Harriet Tubman and supported by the city of Newark, NJ. See the concrete cast of Tubman’s eye, used in the creation of the monument, in the exhibit.

Studio Cooke John is a multidisciplinary design studio valuing placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the environment. 

Nina Cooke John’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Dwell, NBC’s Open House, the Center for Architecture’s 2018 exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, and PBS NewsHour Weekend. 

Nina Cooke John

With Every Fiber responds to Design for Freedom’s efforts to remove the veil covering the reality of unethical labor practices in the construction industry. The exhibit draws Grace Farms visitors – neighbors from across the street and design professionals from around the world – into the space and invites them to contemplate what goes into making our homes, places of work, cultural spaces, and sites for commemoration.

Visit Grace Farms

With Every Fiber is on view at Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut. Grace Farms is free and open to the public six days a week.

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