Sharon Prince, visionary force behind Grace Farms, on her career-guiding ethical compass

2022-03-23T16:25:00-04:00

“Think about it. First it was food,” she says, referring to the decades-long push for local, sustainable and ethical eating, as well as reliable sourcing and labeling. “Then came clothing. I’m proposing that shelter will be next.” “Our velocity for good has been established day by day.”

Writer Ted Loos visited the SANAA-designed Connecticut retreat virtually for a profile of founder Sharon Prince, a former fashion retail executive who founded the 80-acre venue in 2009 around the five core principles of nature, the arts, justice, community, and faith.

Prince spoke about her collaboration with new American Academy member and Yale SoA Dean Deborah Berke on a project called Design for Freedom that looks to hold the industry into account for support unethical labor practices by creating a database that is exclusive of firms with a known history of dealing with sordid entities at the front end of the building materials supply chain.

Previously on Archinect: SANAA's Grace Farms “River” building wins latest MCHAP

“At Yale, Sharon provided initial support for a new joint course between the architecture school and the law school that traces the role of forced labor in the building supply chain and seeks to eradicate it from the architectural design process,” Berke explained...

Grace Farms' Design for Freedom movement seeks to eradicate forced labor from the production of building materials

2020-10-28T12:48:00-04:00

Sharon Prince, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Grace Farms Foundation, announced this week Design for Freedom, a new movement to eradicate modern slavery from the built environment by addressing the systemic use of forced labor in the building materials supply chain.

"Examining our building materials supply chain is a moral and legal imperative,” said Prince in a statement. “Almost all modern construction projects are subsidized with slavery, due to unchecked forced labor that permeates thousands of raw and composite materials sourced both locally in the United States and globally. While initial attention concentrated on developing ethical labor practices on construction and job sites, we now seek to extend these regulations to the building materials supply chain, including oversight of sub-contractors, manufacturers, and commodities-level providers in such areas as forestry, fiber, and mining."

Design for Freedom began back in 2017, when Prince and the late Bill Menking, Fo...

Archinect - News

Sharon Prince, visionary force behind Grace Farms, on her career-guiding ethical compass

Grace Farms' Design for Freedom movement seeks to eradicate forced labor from the production of building materials