Grace Farms Foundation Hosts 'Designing for Freedom' Nov. 15

From the Grace Farms Foundation:

November 8 2019

GRACE FARMS FOUNDATION PRESIDENT CONVENES INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO DISCUSS THE UNPRECEDENTED INITIATIVE TO DISRUPT MODERN SLAVERY IN THE ARCHITECTURE AND GLOBAL CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

NEW CANAAN, Conn. – November 7, 2019 – Grace Farms Foundation today announced the upcoming public convening of experts and industry leaders on November 15 to discuss the eradication of modern slavery from the architecture and global construction industry, one of the largest industrial sectors in the world. Sharon Prince, President and Founder of Grace Farms Foundation will open the program with a presentation and participate in a panel discussion with former Ambassador Luis c.deBaca, Senior Justice Initiative Advisor to the Foundation, who will moderate, Nat Oppenheimer, Principal and EVP of Robert Silman Associates and Structural Engineer for Grace Farms, and Hayes Slade, President of AIA New York and Founding Partner and Principal of award-winning Slade Architecture. Together, they will address the prevalence of slavery in the building materials supply chain, and share innovative, new frameworks that are being proposed to expose and dismantle exploitation in building supply chains.

“Grace Farms Foundation is committed to disrupting modern slavery worldwide and calling attention to its pervasive reach in the built environment,” said Prince. “The use of slave labor in the architecture and construction industry is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry, which is used to subsidize increased returns on investment. We aim to remove the imprint of slavery by creating a multi-channel movement that initiates a radical paradigm shift toward ethical building material supply chains in the design and construction sector, akin to the industry’s attention to the environment.”

Recently, Prince and Grace Farms received the NYC Visionary Award from the AIA New York and the Center for Architecture for “raising the visibility of architecture and culture by using the transformative power of design to further the Foundation’s mission to do good in the world.”

This fall, Prince, Architect Newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Bill Menking and others also launched the Grace Farms Foundation Architecture + Construction Working Group, a first-of-its-kind initiative to expand efforts to eradicate modern slavery by focusing on the supply chain in the architecture and construction industries. Prince, c.deBaca, Oppenheimer and Slade will illuminate how other leading members of the working group including other engineering firms, designers, construction companies, owners and developers, supply chain auditors and industry associations, as well as scholars, activists, artists and architecture journalists, aim to dismantle slavery within the built environment.

The free event takes place from 7:30-9pm at Grace Farms, and registration is required. More information can be found at www.gracefarms.org/calendar.

This press release was produced by the Grace Farms Foundation. The views expressed here are the author’s own.