New Beginnings

Healthcare facilities are primarily focused on functionality and efficiency creating environments that don’t always focus on the care receiver. The quality of space and the environment you surround yourself with can influence your overall well-being (Ulrich, 1991). This thesis uses interior architecture as a tool to aid in the healing and recovery process of mothers giving birth for the first time.

Initial research will look at the birth experience as a whole and understand the underlying issues that occur in healthcare facilities. It’ll then look at the medicalisation of childbirth and reverse the impacts these environments have on birth. It will also explore post- birth practices in different cultural groups in Aotearoa New Zealand to gather an understanding of what is needed to create spaces that can integrate these cultures and their practices.

It aims to investigate lived experiences through interviews with women who have given birth for the first time, in the past three years in a healthcare environment, to obtain an understanding of immediate birth and post-birth experiences.

This research proposes an alternative space that allows for cultural integration and understands the spatial requirements needed for birth and recovery rooms in the context of a birth care centre in Wellington.