Design for Freedom: Building a More Humane Future Without Forced Labor | The Embodied Suffering Toolkit

Material Bank's "Design Your Impact" Series

Design for Freedom: Building a More Humane Future Without Forced Labor | The Embodied Suffering Toolkit

1 x IDCEC Credits Offered to All Attendees (0.5 for each half-hour session)

This event comprises 2 x 30-minute sessions from 12 noon to 1pm.

Session 1 Overview: “Is your building ethically sourced as well as sustainably designed?” This is the central question of Design for Freedom, Grace Farms’ new movement to eliminate forced labor from the building material supply chain. More than 28 million people are held in dangerous labor conditions around the world, with many of them extracting and producing the very materials that go into foundations, curtain walls, and interiors. Design for Freedom is working to change that by creating a radical paradigm shift to remove forced labor from the built environment. Sustainable building must go beyond protecting the environment to also include protecting the people who extract and produce the materials with which we build.

This session will raise awareness of forced labor in the building materials supply chain, provide an overview of the most at-risk materials, explore legal risk and compliance and how we can work together with partners to design and build a more sustainable and humane future for all.

Session 2 Overview: In this session, you'll learn about the Embodied Suffering Toolkit, which is being spearheaded by a dynamic group of academics, architectural and engineering practitioners, S-LCA experts and computer scientists from Yale, KieranTimberlake and Buro Happold with the common goal of raising awareness of the unethical working conditions associated with materials sourced in the built environment.

This session is brought to you by

The Carbon Impact Program is a free, exclusive Material Bank program supporting firms on their sustainable design journey. Program partners gain access to firm specific sampling impact metrics and customized digital tools to support sustainability education and material specification efforts. The program is available for firms with 10+ Material Bank members and requires minimal set-up and execution time. Click here to learn more.

By registering for this session, you agree to be contacted by our event hosts with selective communications after the event.