Open Collections

Abstract

This project examines birth as a liminal threshold that has always necessitated space, investigating how architecture can move beyond clinical optimization to honour the complexity of maternal experience. Through an interdisciplinary methodology encompassing cross-cultural narratives, craft traditions, nomadic furniture typologies, and ancient semiotic systems, the research reveals how birthing tools, rituals, and folklore have historically shaped and been shaped by their spatial contexts. Recipe offerings and furniture prototypes serve as tangible design propositions, demonstrating how architectural thinking can embrace the domestic, the nomadic, and the ceremonial. In life, death, and the liminal space between, this project asks: what is it to be molded by circumstance, and how might we design spaces that shape circumstance in turn? Ultimately, this research reconceptualizes the role of designers in creating environments that don’t merely house birth but actively participate in how we “mother” our world, suggesting that attention to maternal spaces offers transformative potential for architectural practice more broadly, one that values care, embodiment, and cultural continuity alongside functional efficiency.