THE NATURAL NURSERY is a natural birthing center that dedicates space, time, and care to the universal experience of birth. Where a child is born is the transitional environment from womb to world. Such a momentous event deserves much more than a sterile hospital room.

Modern labor has been placed in hospitals alongside illness and injury, and as a result, gets treated the same. Mothers are rushed in and out of delivery rooms, given few choices about their birth, and fall victim to institutionalized racism that results in increased maternal mortality rates. We have hyper-medicalized, birth to the point of neglecting the well-being of everybody involved.

Hospitalized labor is an isolating process. It lacks comfortable mother-oriented spaces for socialization. This reinforces a stigma around the challenges of birth/postpartum, and the idea that labor is a private medical procedure to be experienced alone. Dismantling and reconstructing that stigma starts with making spaces for women to lay the foundations of a supportive community. A community where the needs of mothers and infants are centered. A feminist design asks for open, fluid spaces that inspire connectivity and transparency.

Fall 2023, Pulp and Museum Board, 1/16”=1’-0”