Design for Freedom: Ethical and Equitable Materiality

Q: In pushing companies with unethical practices to adopt fairer and more transparent practices, what support can be put in place for people undergoing forced labor who rely on that income however minimal and unfair to survive day to day. Some if not many of those people could lose their jobs as a result of the company having higher overhead costs for more ethical practices. Is Grace Farms collaborating with any other organizations to address this? 

A: (Sharon Prince) The first thing to note is that forced labor is not voluntary. Cheap labor is voluntary. That’s the difference. In many cases, these individuals have been manipulated and become indebted. Often this debt is intergenerational and pushes them into forced labor conditions. They are often under threat of violence or coercion. What is important to note too is that due to issues of legal compliance, companies are actively looking for verification of fair labor and fair labor practices. What we’re doing with Design for Freedom is seeking to normalize fair pricing. We’re also looking for remediation tactics to start to pay formerly enslaved laborers a fair wage. Living wages are of course different in each country, and in the Design for Freedom Toolkit we have included the Living Wage Calculator. I also would like to note the role that child labor plays. There are 160 million children that are also in forced labor conditions. These children quite often work alongside their families at the expense of their education.

We can no longer accept the “slavery discount.” As we drive costs lower, we raise the risk of human costs unknowingly. Without inspection there is no accountability. This limits innovation and commercial viability because you’re relying on cheap materials. Therefore, R&D dollars are not invested. Owners, architects, engineers and specifiers all play an important role and can prioritize ethical procurement from the beginning of the process.

Q: What about the issue of questioning what kinds of projects to engage in that don’t go tracing back through the supply chain but look ahead at the impact of such projects on real estate values? Projects that will eventually and knowingly cause displacement and an increase in the number of unhoused people. How do we get Architects to behave more responsibly and not engage in treating housing as a commodity?

A: (Sharon Prince) That’s really about the owners. Architects are responding to owners. Projects can either advance a social good or detract from it.

One thing we’re putting into our next Toolkit is a section on prison labor. There’s the building of prisons and prison labor that is evident in terms of the furniture supply chain in the US. Do we have child-enforced labor in the US? We do, and it’s becoming more apparent. Quite often it’s because of the migrant population that doesn’t have immediate work. When approaching a project, having a mindset of what we build and what that does to the environment and people is important. In Nara, Japan, I was impressed by a thousand-year-old standing wooden temple and structures that last that long because of their generational sustainability approach and how they’re built.

Q: Have you identified specific instances and issues of slave child labor in the US?

A: (Sharon Prince) The media is part of the ecosystem of the built environment because of the awareness they can create. Many are covering accounts of forced and child labor, both within the US and around the world. We are also beginning to look at prison labor to illuminate the issue domestically. A sub-group of our Design for Freedom Working Group is beginning the very initial stages of generating research that can inform the construction sector. The US is not exempt from this humanitarian issue.

Q: Is this issue showing up in corporate ESG (Environmental Social and Governance Reporting) reporting?

A: (Sharon Prince) What we’re finding is that corporations are looking for ways to advance the “S” in ESG, but it is often the piece that is the least emphasized. Design for Freedom presents the opportunity to prioritize fair labor inputs and advance those looking to demonstrate their commitment to ESG principles broadly. Fair labor, one of the most basic human rights, is certainly part of social equity. For example, Turner Construction, who has worked on several Design for Freedom Pilot Projects, has made Design for Freedom Principles part of their ESG efforts.

Q: We are really excited about learning about the movement and working with it in studio and in the competition. I was wondering what depth you’re looking for in the competition in the design research category in terms of material research? We would love to look at the supply chains but may not have time to fully do that and finish the design. What do you envision as evidence of our work in this respect?

A: (Michael Crosbie) Documenting the supply chains is a real challenge. While I was writing the program for this competition, I used my graduate studio students as guinea pigs to have them trace some supply chains for the project that they were working on. They were working on a site in New Haven and they ended up trying to do as much sourcing for materials close by, so that the supply chains are very short. The students worked with a lot of Connecticut companies, Connecticut contractors, and suppliers. They documented who they spoke with at these companies and what kind of responses they got from their questions. They created a list of questions, sort of a script, and documented the responses they received, in terms of going to the source of where products were coming from. My suggestion here would be to make this part of the project easier by basically trying to source as close to the site as possible. To compress this supply chain and document that process.

Q: Architects actually have some rare power in the form of specifications. And Design for Freedom is a great example of a ground up movement. But doesn’t the example of the Uyghur Forced Labor legislation you mentioned indicate that there are and always have been problems with the way the USA has incorporated globalism?

A: (Sharon Prince) You are correct that legislation plays an important role in advancing ethical and sustainable supply chains, as we see with the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act. Legislation is proliferating both in the US and around the world with the goal of making corporations more accountable for the transparency in their supply chains. Yet, we know that legislation is not enough. We all have a role to play. Specifiers have the ability to pursue an open or closed spec process, which can allow them to select more ethically sourced products and materials. We include a D1 Design for Freedom specification in our Toolkit and are issuing a 2024 Toolkit that includes even more robust specifications. Architects, engineers, suppliers, and consumers can all apply pressure through their choices to increase transparency and design and build more humanely.