Student and University Involvement
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Colleges and universities are responsible for teaching students to think critically and act responsibly. To prepare them for a changing world. To be problem solvers. By integrating Design for Freedom into the university experience – you are pushing each of these objectives forward.
Design for Freedom can equip the next generation of leaders to include fair labor inputs into their new and existing means, methods, and processes in order to create transparency and a more equitable future.
Engagement with Colleges and Universities
Partnerships with colleges and universities invest in the pipeline of future leaders and incubators of innovation and change. To execute against this, Design for Freedom:
- Engages with faculty and administrators in engineering, architecture, law, public policy, and business schools, providing opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and engagement.
- Collaborates with membership organizations with the breadth and reach of students across the globe to work closely with the next generation of workers and leaders in respective fields.
Enter ACSA’s 2025 Design for Freedom Competition
Ethical and Equitable Materiality to End Forced Labor
Registration Deadline: April 9, 2025
Submission Deadline: June 4, 2025
Grace Farms is partnering with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) on a student design competition for the 2024-2025 academic year. The competition is intended to challenge students, working individually or in teams, to explore how architectural materials research and design can eliminate forced labor in the building materials supply chain – to explore and propose how architects can work to eradicate forced and child labor from the built environment.
Watch the online discussion below to learn more about the Competition:
Get Involved with the Design for Freedom Movement
Apply for an Internship
Join our team! We offer a limited number of internships to students.
Tour Grace Farms
Visit us to learn about ethical and sustainable practices through our tours, educational programs, and pop-up talks. Approved for AIA CES 1.5 LU.
By the Numbers | Design for Freedom in Colleges and Universities
Professionals, industry leaders, and students reached since 2019
Student attendees representing 23 universities attended the 2024 Design for Freedom Summit at Grace Farms
Dedicated classes about Design for Freedom led and developed by Working Group members at Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Yale University
Presentations and lectures given to professionals, students, and the public about Design for Freedom since 2019
More than two dozen universities have engaged with Design for Freedom, including:
The Catholic University of America
City College of New York
Columbia University/Barnard College
IE Business School
Illinois Institute of Technology
New York University Stern School of Business
Parsons School of Design
Pratt Institute School of Architecture
Stanford University School of Engineering
University of Connecticut
University of Hartford
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Maryland
University of Michigan
University of Southern California
University of Tulsa
University of Washington
Yale School of Architecture
Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture
Watch a Webinar Presented by Grace Farms Foundation and Pratt Institute
Grace Farms partners with higher education institutions to provide a range of resources, including webinars focused on innovative tools in the movement toward building humanely and lessons learned from other industries in the fight against forced labor.
Bring Design for Freedom into the Classroom
Host a Design for Freedom lecture
Our team and a number of working group members are available to provide an in-person or virtual lecture about the Design for Freedom movement. Lectures are often a pathway to either substantiate a proof of concept or demand for a class, or to modernize existing curriculum with another lens.
Offer a Design for Freedom Course
To date, three universities have offered courses exclusively focused on Design for Freedom, and many others have embedded elements of the movement into existing courses.
DARTMOUTH | TUCK SCHOOL OF BUSINESS | First Year Project
We are partnering with a team dedicated to examining Design for Freedom strategy during a ten-week project.
YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | Advance Design Studio: Provenance & Possibility
Spring 2024 | Alan Ricks, Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor, and Abigail Chang, Critic and Architect
The concept of provenance delves into the origins and narratives encapsulated within the materials and products deployed in construction. Provenance presents architects and builders with an extraordinary opportunity to make ethical choices that are not just sustainable but deeply meaningful, leading to transformative impacts in our built environment.
While the notion of provenance is often associated with art ownership, it resonates within architecture and construction as well. The “Ownership history,” as described by Christel Force, Metropolitan Museum of Art associate research curator, posits that “objects have a life from the time they are created, with provenance tracing their biography. Provenance is the lives of objects and their owners, wrapped into one.”
The studio will investigate provenance through various lenses, including how it advances ethical sourcing and labor rights, the inextricable link between social and environmental impacts, and the opportunity to champion the value of craft.
ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA CHAMPAIGNE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | The Future of Materiality: Ethical and Equitable Material Sourcing
Spring 2023 | Patricia Saldaña Natke
The Seminar Course will analyze the ethical and social dimensions of building materials. The current global supply chain includes over 45 million people around the world still working under forms of coercion, with over 70% being women and children. A $150 billion dollar industry of forced labor and forms of human trafficking are still in existence. The class will trace the supply chain of many commonly used building materials, among them brick, copper, drywall, stone, and timber. Through research on material production, procurement and construction techniques through an ethical lens, the course will add to the architectural movement of material transparency and awareness, including future material sourcing industry certifications. The seminar will include readings, discussions, guest speakers, and an optional trip to the Design for Freedom Summit in New Canaan, Connecticut on March 30, 2023.
PRATT INSTITUTE | Innovative Tools in the Movement Toward Slave-Free Buildings
Fall 2020 | Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, Dr. Harriet Harriss, Dean of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, Susan Jones, Principal Architect and Founder at Atelier Jones Architecture, Chris Sharples, Principal at SHoP Architects, Michael Green, Principal at Michael Green Architecture, Phillip Bernstein, Associate Dean at Yale School of Architecture
Although human rights advocates have begun to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of forced labor in construction projects around the world, the use of raw and composite materials produced by forced labor in the built environment largely continues with impunity.
What is modern slavery? What is an ethical building materials supply chain? Many architects and designers work to ensure a building is sustainably built, but are they also ensuring it is ethically sourced?
This panel will begin to explore how the architecture, construction, and design industries grapple with these questions and how these industries might better use digital models, design-to-construction integration tools, big data, and analytics to ensure ethical building materials supply chains.
YALE and the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL | Ending Modern Slavery in the Built Environment
2021 – 2024 | Phillip Bernstein, Yale School of Architecture Associate Dean and Professor Adjunct, Luis C.deBaca, Faculty, University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, and Former Advisor to Grace Farms, and Doriane Meyer, GLC Postdoctoral Associate Fellow, Lecturer in Yale School of Architecture
Interdisciplinary, Collaborative Course between Yale University and University of Michigan Law School, 2021-2024
YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | Fighting Slavery in the Building Materials Supply Chain
Launched Fall 2020 | Phillip Bernstein, Associate Dean and Professor Adjunct and Lecturer and Luis C.deBaca, Lecturer, Former Senior Advisor to Grace Farms, and Ambassador (ret.)
This seminar operationalizes recent statutory and regulatory changes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia that extend enforcement of laws against forced and child labor into company supply chains. Drawing on law, business, and sustainability practices, we seek to incorporate an anti-slavery ethos into the architectural design process for the first time. Multidisciplinary teams of students from across Yale’s professional and graduate schools “slavery-proof” a particular input or process in projects that the architecture students are working on in their studio classes. This class was supported by Grace Farms Foundation
To inquire about a guest lecture at your college or university, or learn more about offering a course, please email Karen Kariuki.
Incorporating Design for Freedom Principles into University Building Projects
We invite university partners to integrate Design for Freedom Principles into new buildings, renovations, or retrofit projects. This can be as involved or as light touch as makes sense for your team. To begin this process, we invite you to utilize our open course materials and tools:
- Design for Freedom Material Tracking Schedule: Download this Excel spreadsheet to input and track selected materials on your project.
- Sample Specification – Ethical Design Requirements: Use the editable Word document to input ethical design requirements into your Division 1 Specification.
- Design for Freedom Supplier Questionnaire
- Design for Freedom Supplier Outreach Letter: Customize this sample Supplier Outreach Letter in .pdf format to send to your own suppliers.
Design for Freedom Pilot Projects
Pilot Project teams accelerate the movement by raising awareness of the pressing humanitarian issue of forced labor in the building materials supply chain. Together, Grace Farms Foundation and these Pilot Projects are modeling transparent and forced labor free supply chains and demonstrating design principles in action by creating a tangible example of a more humane built environment.
There are Pilot Projects in the U.S., the U.K., and India. Each of first slate of projects is, or will be, open and accessible to the public.
Recently announced Pilot Projects:
• The Grain Market, Jodhpur, India designed by Diana Kellogg Architects
• Unshattered’s Project Possibilities, Wappingers Falls, NY designed by MASS Design
• New Building Project designed by Page
• The Brij, an arts and culture center, New Delhi, India designed by CRAB Studio
Each fall we conduct an open RFP process to select pilot projects for the following year.
Explore a set of tools and resources to inform, guide, educate, and engage the public and industry leaders as well as higher education faculty and staff, and students.