Learn more about our work over the years to illuminate forced labor in the building materials supply chain and create market transformation within one of the largest global industries.

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.

The Design for Freedom Pilot Project Program is a unique platform that highlights Design for Freedom principles in action and offers leaders and innovators the opportunity to be exemplars by demonstrating ethical supply chains and leading human rights due diligence in completed works. Three fundamental and inextricably linked principles guide our joint actions:

Find and address embedded forced labor – so that project stakeholders no longer profit from the slavery or exploitation discount.
Pursue ethical decarbonization – ethical decarbonization recognizes the link between the climate crisis and embedded forced labor in our building materials.
Prioritize circularity – by shortening the supply chain by reusing and recycling materials, we reduce the risk of forced labor at the source or extraction level of the supply chain.

There are over a dozen Design for Freedom Pilot Projects currently in design or completed on three continents, with a range of typologies.

Officially launched in October 2020, The Design for Freedom Working Group has brought together more than 100 industry leaders from the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, and beyond, to harness the power of the built environment to uphold and support human rights and remove forced and child labor from the building materials supply chain. Within a short time, the Design for Freedom and its Working Group, led by Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, has raised global awareness and created institutional responses through media, high-level events such as the Design for Freedom Summit, and international Pilot Projects.