Special Feature
Meet some of the people with whom Sheila works.

Bianca Lepori

Architect of Birth Rooms


Bianca's prototype design for a birth room

 Bianca Lepori studied how women in labour moved spontaneously when unrestricted. She concluded that "Women who can give birth naturally do not need particular colors, nor beautiful furniture that reminds them of their homes: They need a space in which to express themselves, in which to wait; they need the space-time to let it happen. The only thing they really need is not to be forced into a particular position. Even pain dissolves with movement; pain killers are a consequence of stillness"

Bianca Lepori's book, written with co-author Karen Franck, Architecture Inside Out, will be published by the Academic Press in 2000.

Positions of a woman in labourBianca designs birth rooms in which women can enter the rocking dance of labour without restraint. There is often a birth pool and invariably a platform so that a woman can sit, kneel, or lie down. The prototype shown above is designed so that a woman is free to move and to choose different positions and different actions. The centre of the room is left open. Movable birthing stools and a towel suspended from the ceiling offer opportunities for stretching, hanging, leaning, squatting and pushing.

Bianca says "This puts the mother physically and emotionally in control and places the staff in a supportive role".

Though not one of Bianca Lepori's designs, this Spanish birth room represents an environment in which a woman is free to move, to express herself and to "centre down" in what Sheila describes as "the birth passion".