This website is under development and will be fully launched in March 2025
Welcome to the Global Birth Environment Design Web Resource for architects and designers. Our mission is to share knowledge about optimisation of birth environment design. We hope that this knowledge hub will serve as a vital resource inspiring, informing, and supporting the creation of salutogenic birth environments worldwide.
This website is the outcome of an international research project with the goal of mobilising knowledge about birth environment design. It is designed to inform and inspire much-needed transformational change across the globe.
Why is transformational change needed? Here are some of the many reasons:
o The design of most birth spaces and places is overly clinical, contributing to medical interventionism.
o There is evidence that the environment plays a role in how birth unfolds, physically and psychologically, including influencing the hormones that trigger and sustain labour.
o The birth environment impacts caregivers, influencing crucial interpersonal interaction, respectful care, and support throughout labour and birth.
o The spirituality of birth is undermined by the medicalisation of birth and birth places.
o Users and designers are not aware of the many ways birth environment design could be optimised, using evidence-based knowledge to support design development.
o Positive birth experience is a fundamental desire and an important goal for long-term health and wellbeing, not being met by the predominant conceptualization of birth as a risky medical event.
o Leaving out the mind/body/environment interrelationship that is crucial for healthy and positive birth experience.
o There is not enough awareness of the role of the setting in making birth a beautiful, emotionally resonant, and empowering experience.
o The short and longterm health of all people and societies can be positively influenced by better birth experience.
Case Studies
The knowledge hub features case studies – positive exemplars we searched for, obtained permission to visit, and documented. We conducted interviews with managers, midwives, doctors, architects, and women and their birth companions.
The development of these ‘live’ case studies evolved from our realization that the visual and sensory nature of architecture and design needs to be present and elevated in the discourse about birth settings. We saw the need to supplement published photos and descriptive texts with our own direct experience in these diverse places and spaces.
Rather than discussing negative aspects, we believe it is important to make visible strong positive exemplars, with images and commentary that point to the issues that matter to salutogenic birth practices and experiences.
In the future we would like to involve others across the globe in finding and elevating strong positive exemplars. Please be in touch if you have a birth centre or maternity facility you feel is an important exemplar.
ICF Framework
As an analytical aid, we have been using the ICF framework, along with an online open-access library providing the actual research articles for designers (work in progress). The framework helps us identify and define issues that designers should consider in seeking to design better birth environments. It connects key Issues to architectural Concepts to actual built Forms (these include all formal and atmospheric aspects of the spatial setting).
Global Birth Environment Design Network
The Global Birth Environment Design Network - GBEDN - is a worldwide network of professionals and researchers who have specifically studied aspects of birth environment design. It is an informal network, and all who are interested in better design of birth spaces and places are welcome. The network was founded by two researchers on the topic, who held a meeting at the Normal Birth Conference in Ann Arbor Michigan in 2018. Today we are working to develop an international, transdisciplinary knowledge repository for better birth environment design. This website is an outcome of our search for colleagues who shared this interest and worked to secure funding for a global research project.
This website is the primary outcome of the research project we developed together, which aims to raise awareness amongst architects and designers about birth environment design that supports women in achieving empowering and positive birth experience.
There are no specific requirements or applications for being a part of this network…if you are doing research on birth environment and share our conviction that this is an important project of our time, please see our website www.gbedn.org and be in touch so we can all share the knowledge we have and develop this work in new ways.