Stiliyana Minkovska

The project began by exploring the maternal-female body as a subject-in-progress. The method used for the examination was to imagine the woman as a place, as an envelope and container and the way the maternal-feminine remains a place separated from its own place, hence re-envelopes herself within herself twice – as a woman and as a mother.

During the birth, the project arose the question of labour and whether it begins when the female body experiences it or when she’s admitted by the hospital personnel.
The architectural proposal is to take birth outside the National HeThe project looks to take birth outside the National Health Service as it is neither a disease, nor an illness. 

The procedures of both labour and birth are used as instruments to trace their appearances as a journey outside memory and rational thought, to a place that supplies material for the production of meaning that remains forever out of reach. Birth is a beautiful voyage of struggle through unknown landscapes and dimensions which leads to an even more remarkable experience – the one of motherhood.

During birth, one provokes the question of labour and whether it begins when the female body experiences it or when she is admitted by the hospital personnel. This has been contended by the creation of a film where the birthing mother is treated as a collection of motions, contingent on both natural external and internal forces.

The design has been informed by using the symbolic relationship between the mother and the foetus and their world composed by unarticulated images and unmediated communication and metaphors illustrating pregnancy and birth such as the klein bottle (a body within a body as two constituent, yet always distinct elements).

The proposal is to deinstitutionalise birth by turning the birthing mother form a medical object to a celebratory matriarchal reproductive economy.alth Service as it is neither a disease, nor an illness. In fact, it is a beautiful battle which leads to even more beautiful experience, the one of motherhood.