The Design for Freedom Movement: Leaders in The Visionary Initiative Take Our Questions

**From left to right:** Luciana Varkulja, Harriet Harriss, Jing Liu, Bettina Korek, Nora Rizzo, Sharon Prince, Chelsea Thatcher, Nina Cooke John, Signe Nielsen, Hayes Slade, and Patricia Saldana Natke

By Julia Gamolina

The Design for Freedom movement brings industry leaders together to eliminate forced labor in building materials supply chains, create true market transformation, and build a more equitable future. In fall 2017, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms Foundation, Sharon Prince, and the late Bill Menking, prolific professor, curator, and Founding Editor-in-Chief of The Architect’s Newspaper, discussed the fact that acknowledging forced labor in the building materials supply chain or what could be done to eliminate it was not on the industry’s agenda.

From their initial conversation, they corralled leading principals across the architecture, engineering, and construction sectors for the Design for Freedom Working Group. Since then, an expanding group of more than 80 industry leaders and experts in the built environment and human rights, is raising global awareness about the hidden humanitarian crisis through pilot projects, the media, symposiums, and partnerships with leading universities. Hundreds of pro-bono hours have been donated by these global leaders. This movement is elevating and accelerating much-needed awareness about forced labor in the built environment.

We gathered the following members of Grace Farms and Design for Freedom, members of the working group, and designers working on the pilot projects to take our questions about the movement, its goals, and its future, learning that cross-disciplinary awareness and urgency, a collective learning process, and actionable steps with real project examples is what it will take to create real change:

Sharon Prince, Founder and CEO of Grace Farms

Chelsea Thatcher, Creative Director and Chief Advancement Officer at Grace Farms

Nora Rizzo, Ethical Materials Director at Grace Farms

Bettina Korek, Chief Executive at Serpentine Galleries

Julie Burnell, Director of Construction and Special Projects at Serpentine Galleries

Hayes Slade, Co-Founder of Slade Architecture

Signe Nielsen, Co-Founder of MNLA

Nina Cooke John, Founder and Principal at Studio Cooke John

Jing Liu, Co-Founder of SO - IL

Luciana Varkulja, Founder and Principal at uma architecture & design

Patricia Saldana Natke, Founding Principal at UrbanWorks

Harriet Harriss, Former Dean of Architecture at Pratt Institute

JG: Tell me about the beginning of the initiative -- how was DFF born out of Grace Farms? What was the seed of the idea, how did it evolve, where is it today?

Sharon Prince: A year after opening Grace Farms in 2015, we hosted a multi-sectoral convening with the United Nations University to address human trafficking and forced labor in conflict zones, the worst forms of modern slavery. A report was delivered to the UN Security Council and thereafter, UN Resolution 2331 — which condemns all instances of human trafficking in areas affected by armed conflicts — was unanimously passed.

Then in 2017, while I was on the AIA National Jury, we were assessing the sustainability of the various buildings, but I realized that social sustainability was not prioritized. When I asked if the bricks used in the construction of a girl’s school in a hotspot area were made without forced or child labor, that question was met with silence. It was apparent that the entire construction industry has been given a labor transparency pass. Once you know, you can’t unknow it and from that point I had a laser focus to bring together leaders within the ecosystem of the built environment who can influence and shift the material supply chain towards ethical sourcing. Without inspection, there is no accountability.

We formally launched Design for Freedom with a first-of-its-kind Design for Freedom Report, co-edited with Chelsea Thatcher, in October 2020 to create a radical paradigm shift towards ethically sourcing without forced and child labor. We are connecting the dots, surfacing facts and research, convening leaders through two inaugural summits, inspiring institutional responses, and proposing strategies to hold leaders of the full ecosystem of the built environment accountable. We believe a more humane future is in our sights and that the disaggregated construction industry is ripe for disruption, especially on the heels of the green building movement, ESG prioritization, supply chain consciousness, and the emergence of new technologies and data sharing platforms. The time really is now.

Chelsea Thatcher: The Design for Freedom movement is the pinnacle example of Grace Farms Foundation’s mission in action. Sharon has essentially set the groundwork for this movement to take shape for years, and when her lightbulb moment happened while on the AIA jury, there isn’t an organization that could have been better prepared to jump head-on to the issue than Grace Farms Foundation.

The cross-disciplinary approach, which we now see in how Design for Freedom is activating the entire ecosystem of the built environment, has been honed at Grace Farms over years with national experts in a range of fields to create unprecedented outcomes. As such, Design for Freedom is a coming together of all the best-of learnings that Sharon has led us through in tackling other pressing humanitarian issues at Grace Farms.

As the movement gains momentum, we now have Design for Freedom Pilot Projects where arts and cultural leaders like Bettina Korek at Serpentine or Mr. Sunil Munjal at Serendipity Arts can make just as big of a difference as architects and engineers to curb the scourge of forced labor and forced child labor.

Serpentine Pavilion 2022 designed by Theaster Gates © Theaster Gates Studio. Photography: Iwan Baan. Courtesy: Serpentine.

JG: Tell me about your goals for a project of this profound scope — what do you hope it to drive and ultimately achieve in one month, in one year, in ten?

Sharon Prince: Our goal is to put Design for Freedom on the AEC industry’s agenda. Thus, we are making this egregious human rights violation known first by early adopters and then more broadly by leaders of industry and students at universities within five years of launching.

At this point almost two years in, we have initial Design for Freedom commitments from a significant share of the construction industry, with major companies like Turner Construction and organizations like the State Department’s Overseas Buildings Operations, which controls billions in construction spending. We are prompting the industry to add fair labor inputs to current and emerging means and methods and to use the Design for Freedom Toolkit developed with Nora Rizzo, Hayes Slade, Bill DuBois at Gensler along with a group of experts.

Ultimately, Design for Freedom is forcing the industry to make the weighty material choice between marginal cost savings and human suffering. And, it’s a personal issue in that each of us can inquire about the provenance and fair labor of one building material — at least one chair. We all have agency. Our strategy is to start broadly, create velocity and compound at an exponential rate – with an urgency worthy of designing a more human future without forced and child labor.

Chelsea Thatcher: There are building projects just starting now that won’t be completed for five to ten years; well, in five to ten years we expect that people will look at buildings and ask where the building materials came from. Building projects are going to be behind, de facto, if they don’t start making commitments to Design for Freedom Principles now.

In the meantime, we are building that mass public awareness, so that people do ask where building materials come from through Design for Freedom Pilot Projects. Currently, almost all of the Design for Freedom Pilot Projects are open — or will be open — and free to the public. Additionally, Pilot Projects Partners are offering their space as a platform for new ideas to drive the Design for Freedom movement forward and sharing information about their Pilot Projects to add to the industry’s body of knowledge. For example, we gathered about 50 international leaders at the 21st Serpentine Pavilion: Black Chapel for an Ethical Action meeting in late September. The leaders that came were interested in pursuing Pilot Projects, so in this way Serpentine is leading the way as a catalyst for a whole suite of other incredible projects which will prioritize ethical procurement.

JG: This endeavor is tremendously important, and tremendously complex. How do you measure success with it as you hit shorter term targets?

Sharon Prince: It’s a success when owners, design and construction teams, and manufacturers no longer ask if it will cost more to ethically source materials in their buildings and no longer accept the slavery discount of buildings that are erected. When battling all forms of slavery throughout history, prioritizing humanity over profit will result in clearing hurdles. Removing entrenched forced and child labor requires the enactment and enforcement of global laws, transparency in the building material supply chain, teaching the next generation, and conduct material research to reveal human rights infractions.

Slavery has been a means to build cities and economies over many millennia and today more are estimated to be enslaved than at any time in history, 50 million people worldwide. We believe that the sheer weight of the construction sector at 13% of global GDP and $12 US trillion with sizable projects and thousands of at-risk materials that we visually see erected and live with is the most promising lever to eradicate an entrenched brutal criminal industry.

Chelsea Thatcher: One of the first banner milestones of success was the first full-time hire to the Design for Freedom movement, Nora Rizzo, our Ethical Materials Director, who came on board about a year ago. It was a true marker of the momentum of Design for Freedom, and we are so thankful that she has come on board with her construction experience and sustainability experience to write the toolkit, be in weekly Pilot Project meetings, speak on panels nationally, and continue to innovate.

Nora Rizzo: Our very short term target is awareness. The AEC industry simply isn’t aware of how pervasive this issue is and how their work can create impact and change. However, as soon as people do recognize that forced and child labor are used in the production of building products, suddenly a lightbulb goes off. Overwhelmingly the initial reaction is “I had no idea! How can I help?”

I’ve even received emails and calls from manufacturers who had heard about Design for Freedom and want to know how they can educate their team, investigate their supply chain and proactively prepare product documentation for the inevitable time when customers will ask for this next level of transparency. Each of these conversations is an immediate success story in terms of our advocacy efforts. This outreach continues with Design for Freedom specific events held at Grace Farms as well as public speaking engagements at industry conferences and conventions.

JG: How did you select the members of the working group?

Sharon Prince: To shorten the timeline to adopt ethical materials sourcing in an antiquated, disaggregated behemoth of a sector, it is critical to include the full ecosystem of the built environment, and of course, to prioritize gender and global diversity. When I asked the remarkable and late William Menking, co-founder and EIC of The Architect’s Newspaper, at Grace Farms to start a working group with me, he said ‘yes’. We both were keen to invite innovative principals, deans and CEOs in order to expedite decisions.

Thankfully they joined, like you Julia, and all have figured out over time how to use their capacity and agency. We are just now seeing committed partners serendipitously hired on the same projects, so that makes potential pilot projects and every project more plausible. Sub-teams are forming organically that are super powerful. Gabe Guilliams, Principal at Buro Happold, designed our lighting at Grace Farms and has been considering how to add his wherewithal for a few years. He recently created a sub-team with supply chain expert Shawn MacDonald, CEO of Verite, and Anna Dyson, Founder of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, to figure out how to add labor inputs to an open source embodied carbon BIM model he is developing. It is also heartening and pretty amazing that competitors in all the sectors are joining in this humanitarian effort!

Nora Rizzo: We’re measuring success through the growth of the movement. Sharon was very intentional in creating Design for Freedom to be a multi-disciplinary approach dedicated to this humanitarian crisis. Our Working Group and larger Design for Freedom community are a diverse group of professionals, advocates, artists, and thought leaders. These perspectives bring creative solutions and partnerships that expand our reach.

Sunhil Munjal Abby Bangser Sharon Prince and Chelsea Thatcher at Black Chapel by Theaster Gates. Photography by Iwan Baan.

Bettina Korek and Chelsea Thatcher at Black Chapel, photography by Harry Richards.

JG: What I love about this group is there are a number of professionals from the built industry here, as no one, and no one type of professional, does anything alone. How do you bring your fellow collaborators on board for the pilot projects, since this is an ambitious, but very necessary way forward?

Bettina Korek: Each project is unique, and a range of collaborating organizations provide invaluable assistance, bringing specialists from across the industry together to realize ambitious architectural visions. We also work closely with engineers and construction teams such as AECOM and Stage One that can expand our knowledge in the built environment, bringing on the relevant minds to complete the Pavilion in such a short timeframe. The 21st Serpentine Pavilion is the first completed international Design for Freedom by Grace Farms project and it’s been an honor to work with CEO and Founder Sharon Prince and her team. Grace Farms Foundation’s interdisciplinary cultural and humanitarian mission to pursue peace through the platform of Grace Farms, is fundamental and brings enormous value to the project.

And Bettina, I know that Grace Farms worked with you and AECOM to trace several materials, including plywood and timber, steelwork, concrete, and the weatherproofing membrane. Your teams engaged with suppliers and manufacturers to trace and document these materials as far upstream in the supply chain as possible to reduced the risk of forced and child labor in the construction of the Pavilion - seen in this brief online - which is incredibly important.

Hayes Slade: In my conversations, no one has debated the importance of abolishing forced labor. There is usually an immediate visceral revulsion once people are aware of the persistence of forced labor. The biggest challenge, I find, is ensuring that people take the next step and translate that innate emotion into action that creates change. I try to usher people along the path from intellectual reaction into action by recommending specific steps one can take—citing examples. The DFF toolkit is a great resource for this. I find it best to acknowledge the challenges as well as the feasibility for change in an honest way. Actionable suggestions and actual examples are the best tools for inspiring action.

Signe Nielsen: It is truly gratifying to participate in this pilot project with such an intelligent and forward-thinking group of colleagues, who offer new ways to address obstacles and shortcomings in our supply chain.

Nina Cooke John: Working with the Design for Freedom protocol is an ambitious undertaking because it is a new lens through which we need to analyze our design and construction process. But, yes, it is a very necessary way forward. Amongst our collaborators there are often different points of view, different areas of advocacy and ownership and different stakes. – cost, complexity of production or management. They also often include large companies along with small fabrication shops with limited staff. We have to make the argument to all of them of how complicit we all are in construction and that the role that each of us play will make a difference, bit-by-bit, in a vast industry.

Tell me about the difference in the processes behind these projects — the conceptualization, the design, the execution, the stakeholder engagement — versus a design project before DFF. How do you, as one bringing it to life, see the difference in the scale of a week, a few months, and the lifespan of the project?

Julie Burnell: The teams come together with the appointed Architect, to support them during this pivotal design period where the design can change between initial concept and completion to meet the brief.

From commissioning to realizing the Pavilion, it takes minimum seven months from invitation to completion and is the biggest challenge of all. The design team comes together to work with the architect, collaborating and interchanging thoughts during the first phase, continuing with the engineers and the people involved in the project design phase through to completion. Design periods are more agile these days as they integrate new technologies which enable the designs to grow more organically.

Today, we are able to expand our design team with forward thinking organizations such as Grace Farms who have enabled a higher level of understanding around sustainability and the impact of material that we use, this can only benefit the design.

Hayes Slade: The entire team needs to share the intention of building the project with ethical materials and practices. There are many stakeholders linked together in any architecture project. At every link in this chain, there is a risk for something undesirable to creep into the project-either a material or a practice. Proactive discussion of the DFF goals at the outset of the project is critical. Architects have traditionally focused on “what” and “why” we are building, but with DFF — as with other standards for sustainability — we must also focus on the “how.” That is a different conversation. We need to be comfortable bringing up these topics. The topic must be introduced conceptually at the outset of the project, targets set, tracking tools established and maintained throughout and construction contracts aligned with the vision.

When Slade Architecture worked with the DFF team on the toolkit, we strove to provide materials to help structure the conversation and provide a jumping off point for project documentation: the initial client conversations, manufacturer and supplier due diligence, specifications and tracking sheets.

Signe Nielsen: Due to the quick turnaround of a pilot project we are currently working on, in order to meet the “return-to office” schedule, the design team targeted site furnishing manufacturers with whom we’ve worked before like Landscape Forms and Vestre. These companies have environmental and sustainability commitments interwoven into their processes and a ready ability to trace materials back to their origin, as well as the capacity to deliver site furnishings within the tight time frame.

Nina Cooke John: The careful selection of materials has always been an important part of our design process as the textures we touch and otherwise encounter really affect how we engage with space and with each other. Now, a deeper scrutiny of the supply chain is more forefront in our process. It is also not only about the materials and where they are from, but also the working conditions of the employees at factories and shops stateside is equally important.

This starts at the conceptualization phase, as soon as we begin to consider what things will be made of and how. We begin immediately thinking of the range of alternatives and the conditions that might affect our decision making. Cost, of course, is always a part of the discussion, but I share Sharon’s words that there is a much larger human cost of not doing anything. We put the project into perspective holistically, describing to all stakeholders why the process is better for the project as a whole, throughout the life of the project beyond the point of occupancy.

New Canaan Library renderings by Centerbrook Architects.

JG: What have you learned working on the pilot projects? And of course, this is only the beginning...what is next in terms of putting these new practices into play regularly?

Bettina Korek: Today, we have world-class supporters and we have always had a global perspective. Beyond our reach as an international arts organization, this international profile makes us attractive to global partners and they need to know that you know your business and can be depended on. Sponsorship, in all its forms, should be about creative and mutually beneficial partnerships that everyone benefits from: Partners and most importantly visitors and communities.

Serpentine will continue to commission Pavilions from architects and architects around the globe. Our aim is to choose architects who are working to expand the boundaries of contemporary architectural practice and to introduce these practitioners to wider audiences through the construction of a high profile structure in central London.

Hayes Slade: I quickly learned that there are many resources already available that can be leveraged to provide transparency into the supply chain. I was not entirely aware of all the information that is already available and this continues to expand. However, for many materials there is a point in the supply chain where we lose transparency. In order to access full visibility from the point of extraction, we will need to create new information gathering tools that can provide clarity and assurances of ethical practices while also protecting proprietary sources.

For example, a vertically integrated manufacturer can control their supply chain from factory assembly through to component fabrication. However, the initial raw material purchase of commodity materials is typically a blind purchase on an exchange. Furthermore, manufacturers are loathe to provide any information into any proprietary sources and practices that yield their competitive advantage. The next step toward tracking and demonstrating a clean supply chain from extraction to retail sale will be creating the information tools and institutions that can confirm sourcing from point of extraction and protect manufacturers’ competitive advantages.

Signe Nielsen: We learned that, indeed, there are some well-known site furnishings companies who have the principles of DFF embedded into their corporate philosophy. We were, however, surprised that other sources to whom we reached out, either had never considered the values promulgated by DFF, or did not have an expressed corporate policy. To me it is much like LEED was at the outset where the vision and the ideals were ahead of the industries, and even designers. It will take time, but with continued pressure from the design fields, manufacturers will come around, if only because it makes good business sense. That is a crude, capitalistic view of the situation, but sometimes money and sales are big motivators.

Nina Cooke John: So many architects have now automatically included considerations around sustainability and carbon impact for all of their projects. Since engaging with the Design for Freedom process, we are now looking at our supply chain in a way that we hadn’t been before. Sometimes the discussion around materials can be very abstract – analyzed around numbers like insulation values and carbon emissions. The DFF process centers people – their working conditions and quality of life. Our work has always been very human centered on the user end, so incorporating the DFF tracker throughout the entire process makes it human centered for the entire timeline.

JG: How do you take on the responsibility of being an ambassador for this initiative? What do you do in your spheres daily, weekly, to convey the significance and importance of this work?

Jing Liu: Since joining the initiative, we have started to discuss internally on a daily basis where the information gaps occur in the supply chain. Currently, there is disconnect between specification, which is the task of the architect, and sourcing, which is the task of the contractor, where essential information is lost.

Information is also lost when materials and goods get cataloged for distribution, making it even harder to trace back to the labor conditions at the site of production. Advocating for the registration of this information across the different steps in the supply chain is one aspect. Another is to work as much as possible with local labors so we gain more visibility into their working conditions.

Luciana Varkulja: Back in 2014, I read Dan Barber’s book ‘The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food’, where he brings up his view on how the farm-to-table movement failed, and how there is a high environmental impact when the farm constantly provides what the chefs and their designed menus need, at any cost. I could see a strong parallel among the food industry, Barber’s view so clearly exposed, and the construction industry. We also design our ‘menus’ with no deep understanding of their impacts.

Patricia Natke: As an architect, an architecture firm owner and an educator, my career has been grounded on good design to uphold equity for more than three decades, and my life-long focus has been based on the belief in positive social impact through design. It was eye opening to uncover the depth of the human dignity, health, safety, and welfare issues that have been overlooked within the building industry. In my firm, we educate our staff so they can inform our clients about the moral and ethical dilemmas within the still mostly opaque material supply chain.

It is a daily challenge when clients choose ideas and solutions on a value system based primarily on financial cost; this model of operation across the building industry needs to be dismantled. As a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, I have embedded the topic of ethical material sourcing into my 4th year Comprehensive Design Studio and the 5th year Advanced Studio. We must live our values in both academical and professional arenas. The reach of this approach has broadened in the past year with the launch of a joint seminar that brings together two leading Midwest universities, IIT and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to further catalyze this initiative.

Temporal Shift by Alyson Shotz. Design for Freedom Pilot Project. Photo by Sahar Coston-Hardy.

JG: You have independent research within your practices that you are also contributing to the initiative. Tell me about what each of you are focusing on.

Luciana Varkulja: I am currently working on research about the Amazon Rainforest — the destruction that we see in the Amazon nowadays, is part of the history of the Atlantic Forest, and most of the restoration initiatives currently happening in Brazil are located in the coastal forest’s remnants. It is important to question if both its destruction and protection could inspire strategies in the Amazon Rainforest. And also to query how many of those initiatives have the communities’ members leading the projects, recognizing their knowledge. Designers and architects must improve their awareness and knowledge on forests and forests’ communities; this will guide us to design and build more holistically.

Patricia Natke: I launched a joint IIT and UIUC architecture seminar, The Future of Materiality: Ethical and Equitable Material Sourcing this semester. The class is tracing the supply chain of many commonly used building materials, including brick, copper, timber, stone and drywall. The course emphasizes the importance of the Design for Freedom initiative while researching these materials through an ethical lens. Through readings, discussions, guest speakers, and site visits, undergraduate, graduate and doctorate architecture students are trained in material awareness and transparency. Educating and harnessing the bright creative minds of the next generation is critical to ensuring durable change in the profession.

Harriet Harriss: During my tenure as the dean of Pratt Institute School of Architecture, both faculty and students focused on exploring how to better inform and enrich the school's curriculum and pedagogy with two, inextricably linked meta-themes: ecological justice and social justice, across the school's eleven different built environment degree programs. Similarly, within my own scholarship and writing - whether I'm discussing the ecological impact of the flashcube or the lack of diversity within ecological discourse within my most recent book — I am committed to consistently cross-examining the ethical responsibilities and unethical actions of architecture and its allied disciplines in the hope that a more truthful and authentic accountability system within the construction industry can emerge. This hope is one I share directly and profoundly with Sharon Prince and her ambitions for the Design for Freedom initiative, too.

JG: And finally, how do we get more and more members of the building community on board, and ultimately, people all around the world?

Jing Liu: Having more high-visibility case study projects is a great way to get more people talking and becoming more aware of this issue. We are actively trying to identify projects that can be part of this group. It's a collective learning process. The more we try, the more gaps and complexity we surface and the more chances we have at tackling them.

Luciana Varkulja: People do have empathy for the subject, but they are also surprised to learn about it. We still insist on checking boxes—this is local, this is certified and etc.—when the issue is much more complex. In addition to that, there is a valid question: how to bring what they have learned into their own practices? The best thing to do is to be close to those resources and know from whom we are sourcing from, especially if we are dealing with forest products (native and planted forests), understanding how forests are managed and the environmental, carbon and social impacts of that activity. A multidisciplinary team is also essential. We all have to do our homework, learning about the logistics of economy and extraction processes, which the design and construction industry is intimately connected to.

Patricia Saldana Natke: Although it has taken decades, social justice and human rights are finally being addressed around the world—from gender equality, accessibility rights, environmental justice, the #MeToo movement, and racial equity. I believe the world is ready to digest the facts and change the way we source, manufacture, and distribute building materials while also recognizing the underlying labor conditions. An awareness campaign is underway and it will require a robust ecosystem—including students, educators, professionals, manufacturers, distributors, subcontractors, and general contractors. This year’s inaugural Design for Freedom Summit was the seed for this multidisciplinary exchange of information. This transformative change will require institutional change, including new certification systems and governmental bodies that demand specifications and documentation through transparent supply chains, locally and globally.

Harriet Harriss: Changing the ethical code of the construction industry requires an ethically-informed and broadly diverse cohort of built environment graduates willing to transform the industry with immediate effect. In turn, the responsibility for this falls to schools of architecture and to accreditation bodies – from NAAB, PAB, LAAB, IFMA and beyond – to reform their pedagogical, curricula and accreditation content and criteria to facilitate this transformation – as a matter of urgency.

Schools of architecture should not simply graduate students for a construction industry 'as is' because the construction industry needs a comprehensive, ethical overhaul. Students' growing social and ecological concerns and willingness to take action should be encouraged and enabled as part of an embedded, new curriculum - one that will ensure a more equitable future for all. To do this, they need skills and knowledge that helps them direct professional practice, not reflect it - and in doing so, become the global advocates and agents of change we will need if we are serious about wanting the planet to survive.