Vaissnavi Shukl
People around the world celebrated international women’s day this week, a specific day marked in the calendar year to celebrate women’s achievements. And while there is much to celebrate for the progress we have made to promote gender equality and women’s rights. The female body still remains at the forefront of national politics, religion and society at large, with ceaseless debates on abortion and the treatment of the female body as property under the state’s jurisdiction. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to make the world a just and equitable place, especially for those who have been historically marginalised because of their race, caste and gender. So for today’s episode, I wanted to talk about the female body, and who better to do so than midwife Cristina Alonso, who has founded the Luna Maya Birth Centers in Mexico. I first met Christina during a retreat for a leadership program at Harvard, and was struck by the work she has done at the absolute grassroots level to ensure that women have a safe and empathetic environment to make the decisions about their bodies and lives. Cris continues to challenge linear and structured models of healthcare, bringing a vision that every woman knows, deep down, what she wants, and is ready to fight for it.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Are you ready? So Chris, you are a public health professional by training and a midwife by practice. So you have no formal training in design, and that’s perhaps why we’re able to have this conversation about your work that really focuses on issues that architecture has for a long time sidelined. Can you introduce us to the Luna Maya Birth Centers in Mexico? What does Luna Maya mean? And what is the big idea behind it?

Cris Alonso
Thank you. Um, and, and I love that I’m a guest on this podcast because it’s, you know, it’s, it’s always so interesting to look at your work from a different perspective, and I’d never thought about it from the design or the architecture perspective, but it just makes a lot of sense.

So Luna Maya means my and moon in Spanish, and it’s a Mexican non-governmental organisation that I founded in 2003. And the reason that I founded it was because there was this global push at the time that all women had to go to the hospital to have their baby and at the local hospital in Chiapas, which is the Southernmost state of Mexico at borders with Guatemala, the hospital, the hospital practices were just really disrespectful and very hard on the women.

Their Syrian rate was really high. Between 60 and 70% it’s since gone up to about 80%, women are supposed to be by themselves, lying on their backs. Um, labour is forced, so women receive high doses of medication, so that it’s as quick as possible. So in general, women were coming out of the process, feeling really abused and really sad and physically just in a lot of pain because of what had happened.

And there was a tradition in this region of Mexico to give birth at home. So I figured, you know, we have evidence from the U.S. from Europe and from, you know, other places in the world where you can have a medium point, you know, you don’t, you don’t need to put everybody in the hospital and have a highly medicalized birth. And you also, you know, we also need women to have safety standards. And good care. So Luna Maya kind of emerged as the bridge between these two worlds. So we can have women who could have access to medication, to professional midwives. While at the same time they didn’t lose their cultural values. So you’re allowed to bring into the birth, whoever they want, they’re allowed to birth from whatever position they want. A whole bunch of details that seem insignificant, but actually make a world of difference during the woman’s experience of birth. So it’s a birth centre and we’ve also expanded to all kinds of care. So we also provide, um, Dinah, Quadro care, paediatric care, and also alternative forms of care, like homoeopathy and acupuncture and massage and therapy and dance and yoga, and, you know, lots of, lots of things.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Right. Um, and I, and I’ve seen, um, images of the birth centre, you know, online on your website and I can’t help, but think about the birth centres in light of a book written by Caroline Criado Perez it’s titled ‘Invisible Women’, exposing data bias in a word designed for men. And it talks about how data influences design in our everyday life. And because big data fails to consider gender as a differentiating factor, things that are designed in our world assume men to be the default ubiquitous users. Now, the thing about birth centres is that they cannot be designed exclusively for cisgender males, right? One is compelled to think about and design for women and kind of only women. So in your field, you call this mode of practice ‘Femi-focal’, which means that it specifically caters to and focuses on the female identifying population. Now, regardless of whether they are mothers or not. How does the family-focused approach influence your design of the board centres? How do you think about birth centres through this approach in a more design focused way?

Cris Alonso
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And it really has to do with designing services around women and women’s lives. So women are busy. They’re really, really busy, and they don’t have a lot of time to get on buses and go to different places. And so, um, and they also don’t have a lot of. You know, time to explain their life story to every healthcare provider they run into.

And so the design of Luna Maya is that there, there can be one health centre where women go for all of their needs. So for, for women, you know, I’ve, I experienced in my own life story and I know this from my friends, and I know this from, you know, the women that I’ve served that. For us as women, we live our lives inside our bodies and then things come up. We’ll need contraception. We’ll have bleeding that we’re like, “Oh, why am I bleeding? It’s not my period.” Or maybe your periods are more painful or it’s late or whatever. And then we get pregnant and then we don’t want to be pregnant or we do want to be pregnant. You know, all these things come up for us all the time.

But, you know, it would make a lot of sense if, if the person or the group of people that was taking care of us knew all of our story. And so the design of Luna Maya is based on this idea that we actually accompanied a woman instead of the woman coming to us. So obviously the woman physically has to come to us. Um, But we will, we will be with her throughout, whatever it is that she’s going through. So if a woman just wants to come for routine gynaecological care, if she’s pregnant, if she already had her baby and she needs paediatric care, the idea is that we will meet her where she is. And then we design her healthcare program, according to her values, which, you know, we have values that are cultural, which have, you know, the land we live on the family that we born into the religion that we believe in all these things, but wheels have personal values, you know, just because we’re Catholic doesn’t mean we necessarily don’t believe in contraception or abortion or.

Just because where, you know, a certain religion doesn’t mean that we necessarily essentially ascribed to everything. So women also have individual values. So what we do is we design a care program or a care package for the woman, what she needs now. And we also keep in mind her money, her economy, you know, not everybody can pay the same thing. So we work with women who are extremely, you know, they’re, they think the money that they have is because they clean houses or they take care of children, or they have crops and they sell vegetables at the market. And we also work with women who are extremely wealthy. So we, we also adapt our prices to women’s income, so that it’s almost as if the richer women are subsidising the poor women.

And the other thing that we do is we, we adapt or we design the care package according to her family needs. So, you know, well, some people really like their family and they love their family and they want their family to be at the birth. You know, I’ve been at births where the grandmothers they’re the aunties, there’s like six or seven matriarchs that are at the birth and are such an important part of it. And then we had other births where the woman would say, “My mom wants to be at the birth, but I don’t want her to be at the birth because for whatever reason, you know, she’s gonna make me nervous. She’s gonna make me afraid.” And we can say to the woman, you know, “I’m really sorry. We have this policy that only the partner, you know, can be at the birth.” I’ll say to a woman. “I don’t mind if your mother gets angry at me. It’s better that she be angry at me, then she’d be angry at you.” You know? So we design these care packages, according to what makes sense for women. And, and that means that our protocols are really flexible. Our medical protocols are not flexible.

Like the way we manage haemorrhage, the way we manage any complication is pretty standard. But the way that we handle, um, You know, belief and value and meaning is very flexible. Some people want their birth hour recorded. They want, you know, they want to post things on Facebook and other people, they just want the lights off and they want to be pretty much by themselves. So we’re always adapting to what it is that women want. And I found it. The women know what they want. Right. You know, we give them space and we give them a listening ear. They know what they want, and they’re happy to tell you. And so we co-create health in a collaborative fashion all the time.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Right. It’s interesting how you mentioned design and the way the service is catered to the woman. Right. And at this point I want to bring into focus, the book that you’ve written and you’ve written a book titled, ‘Open a Midwifery Centre, A Manual For Launching And Opening Midwifery Centres In Global Settings’. And the book kind of highlights a community-based model of care, right. A one that reflects in the structure of the organisation like you mentioned, It’s day to day programming, as well as, uh, the design of the building. And I, and I know, I think I was listening to another interview of yours somewhere else. And you mentioned that the building is the last thing to come. The first thing that you need to start the centre is to figure out the organisation, right? The structure of the organisation, the program, and then the building is the last thing that comes now from a more architecture bias perspective. I would love to know how. Are blood centres different from other healthcare institutions like hospitals? So say, but particularly different from specialised hospitals or ones that only provide gynaecological services. You know, how does a design, um, either in terms of the organisation or the building itself, reflect the approach that you’re talking about, one that’s based in community. You know, care or the family focused method of designing.

Cris Alonso
Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll talk about three things in particular. The first thing is in the gynaecological space, we don’t actually use gowns and anyone, any woman who’s been to a gynaecological space knows about the gown. Right. And the gown is this, this sort of backwards sheet that you put on and it’s one in the back. Right. And so you’re kind of walking around with your butt, hanging out. It’s very, it’s kind of humiliating. And then you get up. On this table with your feet in the air, it kind of feels like you’re a roasted chicken. And we redesign that space in this way. What we’ve done is, um, we got, we, we never bought the gowns. What we did was we bought long flowy skirts, the kind that have elastics around them. You know, I mean, basically we need to be able to visualise a woman’s parts, a woman’s private parts. So we don’t really care what she’s wearing as long as she’s not wearing underwear. So we have in the changing room, we have long flowy skirts that are hanging there and they’re colourful and they’re beautiful. So women can pick what colour skirt they want. The other thing that we did was, in the gynaecological space, we do have a, you know, regular gynaecological table. And what we did was we hung cloth from the ceiling. So it’s almost imagined it. I’m sorry. It’s just like hanging from the ceiling. So she’s looking at beautiful things. The walls are painted in bright colours. And the back of the gynaecological table is upright and there’s pillows on it. So she’s much more comfortable and she doesn’t have to be lying completely on her back. We, his mirrors as well, we have hand mirrors so she can hold a mirror. We can hold the mirror so that she can see what we’re doing. She can see inside herself. So I think that’s a huge step in making this about her and her spirit instead of making it about us, trying to just get something out of her so that we can solve her problems. The second space I’ll talk about is the prenatal room and the prenatal room. Um, it has a single bed.

So one of the things that happens when you’re pregnant is that you’re often told to get up on these gynaecological tables that are very narrow. And as you. As you become more pregnant, you become larger and larger. And these tables are like, Oh my gosh, I’m going to fall off and get on this. And so we were like, well, we don’t actually need this table. So what we have is a single bed. So it’s a lot closer to the floor. Women just have to, you know, sit down on it. It’s a lot more comfortable and their children fit on the bed. Oftentimes women come to prenatal care with their other children. So the children are playing around. We have a basket of toys in the prenatal room, so it almost looks like a bedroom with chairs in it because we also have obviously some, some chairs, some comfortable chairs so that the midwives can say, or the husband can sit and chat. Um, Again, you know, just talking about the fact that we expect women to come with their children, oftentimes in a doctor’s office, you’ll have to find a babysitter, you know, and not have your daughter. We think it’s absolutely normal that a woman comes to practice, you know, for prenatal, with her kids.

And the third space to talk about is the birth rooms. So in the birth room, what we have is, um, the centre of the room is actually. The birth, the birth tub, the water brisk. We use water as a form of analgesia because we don’t have the option of anaesthesia and birth centres. So water offers a very gentle way for women to have some pain relief. And really the centre of the room is the water tub. And the bed is kind of off to the side because what we want to do is encourage women to get off the bed. We don’t want women labouring on the bed. We want them active, standing up in the tub. Right. Let me have, you know, we have claws hanging from the ceiling so that women can hang on, you know, so women can kind of lean on the hammock and the hammock will hold their weight.
And the other thing is that the bed is a double bed. And this, you know, again, when you give birth in a hospital, you give birth and you get in the, you know, you, if, whether or not you give birth in the bed or not, but you, after you give birth, you get into the single bed with your baby and your partner is, is supposed to, I don’t know, go home. And in this case, we acknowledged that the burner also wants to get into bed or, or sometimes the sister, you know, like other people, other children want to get into the bed. A little bit, and that allows that, you know, that it goes back to the idea that this is a family. This is a family ritual, this is a family event. And so after the birth, we want the family to be together eating, celebrating, you know, So everything’s, it’s much more designed around the actual physiological process of what’s happening to the woman. So then this, you know, equipment that kind of separates the woman into different parts or into different processes.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Right, right. It’s, you know, I’m listening to you and I’m almost thinking that this is something that. We designers ideally should strive towards getting this kind of detailed before we actually put, you know, bend to the paper because the way you described each and every space was almost anthropological in a sense, you know, really looking at, um, women, their needs, their requirements, the process, um, The whole, what almost ritual of giving birth, and then almost as kind of an act of observation or listening, you manifest all these different things in a more spatial sense. All right. You’re talking about, um, making the space warmer by putting textiles in or having a double bed. You know, these are little things that unless you are completely immersed or directly engaged in the process as an outsider, if you were to call me and it’s like, “Hey, you know, I’m designing your I’m opening another birth centre.”

And I would love for you to design. And I would have to start from the scratch. Look at a couple of dozen women, see what their process is like, and then still, maybe not come up with the solutions you just mentioned. Um, the other thing that I also kind of, it’s stuck to me personally with, um, I think in some of the birth centres, you have a storefront. And I saw images of these beautiful things, like essential oils and everything just stayed there. And I could almost imagine this being, um, a place of a retreat, you know, that kind of supports local economies and that you have, be it textiles, be it aromatic oils, be it healthcare products that seem to be locally produced that are put at the storefront of the birth centre. I would love to hear about, you know, the role of the birth centre in creating the certain local ecosystem that promotes other zooming women run business, but not necessarily as a part of its programming and how it also reflects. In a physical space at the end of the day.

Cris Alonso
Yeah, it kind of goes back to your first comment about, you know, designing spaces that make sense to the people that use them. And I think it, it kind of goes with that of like, I think, you know, like a clinical space is an intervention in people’s lives. Nobody has a hospital bed in their house. Nobody organises their home the way that a hospital is organised, it doesn’t make any sense. And, the same thing happens. At the front, the front is sort of like the reception area, the waiting room and the front is, is, is designed as an exchange really. And it’s kind of like the same idea that when women are hanging out, we often offer advice and we often give things to each other, you know, it’d be like, “Oh gosh, you’re cold here. I have this sweater that I never wear. Take it.” You know, and so for many years we had baskets of clothing where people could come and leave off their clothes and take it. And you’re like, “Oh gosh, it’s raining. I need an umbrella. I need a jacket.” You know? Um, and, and the other thing too, that we realised was that. Women would come to us after having their baby and say, you know, I don’t want to go back to work because I want to be with my baby. It’s important for me to stay at home and take care of my baby, but I need to generate some income. So I’ve been making these cloth diapers, or I’ve been making these baby slings, or I’ve been making these creams for women and stretch marks, and I sell them here and we’re like, Well, sure. I mean, what, what better than to use our physical space as a place where we can help women generate an income so they can take care of their babies and breastfeed.

Right. You know, it all goes in, it goes, it ties into our values and it also ties into the women’s values. So it’s, it’s kind of like a win-win. We’ll have women come to the birth centre because they’re looking for the stretch Mark cream and they’re like, Oh, I didn’t know that you did pap smears. Great. I actually need one, you know, So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s almost like that, you know, I’ve always believed so much in women’s exchange. Like how much value we get out of just hanging out and talking to each other. And if we can create physical spaces where women can hang out and talk to each other, And, you know, somebody can say, Oh, I didn’t realise that making cream was so easy. You just do this, you know, you, you boil them, you do this and that.
Oh my gosh, this is so much easier than, you know, maybe putting some stuff on my baby that I’m a little scared to put on them. Skin is so gentle or whatever. And so it’s, you know, it’s just a way for women to exchange information, right?

Vaissnavi Shukl
It’s a way of Skillshare or product exchange or whatever you want to call it. But basically bringing together a community of the men who’ve had similar experiences who have had shared experiences and then kind of highlighting that, or kind of putting it at the centre stage of the boats and us almost kind of. You’re not just focusing on it being a bartender, but also looking at the pre and the post of it and how it becomes the locus of activities for all the women who are going through the same thing in their life right now, or similar things.

Cris Alonso
Exactly. And it goes back to, you know, how we open this conversation is that women’s life doesn’t end when the baby’s born. You know that when the baby is born, you have a lot of questions that come up and, and, you know, we’ve had women just come and spend the afternoon. They stopped by for some tea, for some, for some breast milk tea, for example, chai that relaxes you and increases the amount of milk that you can produce because you’re more relaxed and they ended up just spending the afternoon hanging out, cause they just need a break, you know, and they, and one of us can hold the baby.

We also have, um, uh, you know, yoga studio or a childbirth education. Room or, you know, just like a classroom basically. And we use it for different things. So we might use it for childbirth education. We definitely, for moms group, we use it for classes. We’re always asking the community, what classes would you like?

Oh, we want a baby wearing glass class. Or we want to conflict in, you know, multiracial couples, class, you know, whatever. Like we’re always asking for things and it’s, and it’s again, it’s a place where. People can gather where they can troubleshoot collectively, because oftentimes, you know, so many of the problems that we have as families can be solved, just either just talking them out or listening to other ideas that other people have had and saying, Oh, let me take a piece of this, a piece of that. Most of what we need as women is not medical advice. It’s a supportive environment. You know, we need the occasional medical advice that a midwife can give us, or she can refer us to a doctor. So it all kind of comes together in this piece of this understanding that health has a continuum.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So I’m going to shift gears. It’s a little bit at this point. When you talk about birth centres and giving birth as a moment of celebration, you know, you can not ignore the fact that there exists an entirely different discourse on abortions, especially in the US where the topic of abortion and the female body has become. An imperative on a wider subject in mainstream politics, public health care, as well as religion I’m reminded of this exhibition and fall 2019 at the GSD where Margaret Shoshan who had the program in art design and public domain, curated an exhibition called love and a mist. Um, and the exhibition looked at the politics of fertility. So should we first do, uh, Lori Brown’s book called ‘Contested Spaces, Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelter And Hospitals’, which talks about the design of these clinics, or rather the lack of design because administrators rarely ever engaged architects or knowing your work and the fact that, you know, Luna Maya also offers abortion services as really wanted to know your thoughts on the stigma related to abortion, how it reflects in the design of these spaces and how we could critically look at it, not just from a design standpoint, but also from a community-based healthcare perspective.

Cris Alonso
Yeah, that’s a really important question. Um, because we often, you know, we get so uncomfortable around the abortion discussion that we best just not talk about it, you know, and, and for us, it’s, for us, it’s part of the same continuum. You know, we acknowledge that making the decision to have an abortion can sometimes be hard. Not always, some women make the decision with a lot of ease and they’re like, it’s just not the time. Or this is not the person or the, you know, and they don’t actually have a lot of drama around making the decision. Other women do. Other women need a lot of space and a lot of time to think about it. A lot of crying time. They might even need therapy. So, we have a very open sort of approach to it. Again, you know, it’s performed in the same space as the gynaecological room that I already explained. The women are wearing flowy dresses. They’re not putting an eye on an Ivy. Um, which, so we, we completely demedicalize the procedure.

The other thing that we do is we tell women to bring somebody who gives them strength and who’s with them on this decision. Sometimes it’s the partner. If she has one, sometimes it’s her best friend. Sometimes it’s her sister. Occasionally it will be her mother. Um, but basically we want her to be with someone that she trusts, you know, And a lot of times in abortion spaces, they won’t let anyone in you under this assumption that. Other people who aren’t getting an abortion, can’t tolerate what it looks like. And again, it’s like this huge stigma that abortion is this, you know, very dangerous, very bloody event that freaks people out and quite the opposite, you know, abortion doulas, which are people who accompany other people, getting abortion are. Yeah, they’re essential. They’re really important. And if a woman doesn’t have a friend or she doesn’t want to tell anybody about this, then we’ll provide her with an abortion doula. Somebody who’s at her head, who’s holding her hand, who’s helping her.

And then the other thing that we do is that the whole process is about her. So, you know, we’re always checking and making sure that she’s in control, that she feels that she’s in control and that we’re doing this on her terms. And this came a lot out of my training when, you know, when I trained in a bar and I saw that, you know, there was once, once the abortion started, there was this assumption of blanket consent, you know, that like, You just have to hurry up and get, get it out and get it the process over as quickly as possible. And we’ll ask women, you know, “Is there anything you want to do? Is there particular music you want to listen to, to prefer silence? Is there something you want to talk about? Is there something you want to say goodbye to? Do you not want to say goodbye? Is there something you want to say?” Um, every single step of the procedure we ask the woman, if she’s ready for the next one. So she’s completely informed of everything we do. We say, okay, now what we’re going to do is this, are you ready for this? And if the woman says, no, we’ll stop and we’ll wait. And we’ll say, okay, you let me know when you’re ready. Right. Wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes, as long as she needs, because it’s really important for us that she be the driver of this.

I think that one of the things that is so traumatic in abortion care in gynaecological care in birth care is when we come out of the experience, feeling that things were done to us. Or just sort of like some uterus that was put on a table and they did things to us instead of us being active adult intelligent participants in this process. And so I think that this, this, again, it speaks to when the space is designed in a way that celebrates your decision, it celebrates your womanhood. It celebrates that you’re an adult. You know what decision is best for you? And we’re going to celebrate whatever that is. You know, and, and, and whatever comes from that, you know, we’ll, we’ll have women come in afterwards and how are you doing? And, you know, some women are doing great. Some women are incredibly relieved. And so we would say, you know, I’d like, I’d like to work through some things. Maybe I’d like some therapy. Maybe I’d like a massage. Maybe I’d like a ritual bath, you know, something, we, we make sure that. This also is integrated into her life as an emotional experience, not just a physical experience. So again, it goes back to this idea that it’s all part of the continuum. We often have women who will have an abortion with us and then come back and have a baby with us, you know? And they’re like, this is, this is my space where I trust you and where I feel like I’m in control.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I mean, it’s kind of heavy to process. I think it’s two sides of the coin, right? You mention that it’s the same space where woman gives birth and the same space where you also kind of. Don’t give birth or decide not to give birth. Right. And I think the best way to kind of summarise this, Oh my God. I have dogs incessantly walking in the background, incessantly barking, just all of a sudden, anyways, the point being that this is a space that is designed exclusively for women. For the female body and for the decisions that she decides to make, uh, and it celebrates all of the above. And I don’t know what jobs in my head, I can’t think of any other institution that does it. That’s designed specifically for women. And that covers such a broad range of needs that she might have. So I don’t know, someday, we’ll see this becoming kind of coming at the centre stage of architecture and there’s there’s. There’s a project that is designed by a mass design group and it’s called, uh, um, maternity waiting village. I think it’s somewhere in Africa. That’s a very interesting take at how women in Africa travel really long distances to give birth.
And in the process of that travel, they sometimes tend to have miscarriages or they don’t have the right physical infrastructure to actually go and. Have this experience, right. This once in a lifetime or will this big life experience. So again, thank you, Cris, for, um, sharing your perspective on it. You’re writing your PhD dissertation now and. Soon, have a doctor as your prefix. So what’s your, uh, what’s your vision for the future of midwifery centres? Do you think, and centres can occupy the centre stage in mainstream design discourses, or if you would like them to become something and something that designers can engage with, or do you think that should be something that designers should just stay out of? “We’re good. We work with these people day in and day out and. We can do it better than you guys can.” What does the future look like?

Cris Alonso
I would really like it if midwifery centres or birth centres took the central stage of healthcare, they haven’t until now. Um, and I would really like it. You know, I think that to me it’s surprising that putting healthcare in women’s hands and designing it around their needs is a revolutionary act. It’s just, you know, it, it makes me wonder like, well then what are we doing? Who does healthcare serve? Right. And, and so I think that, you know, we keep, we could keep putting patchwork on maternity centres where like, well, now we have to decrease this area in rates. Now we have to improve our respect. So we’re going to do a training on, on kindness and on respect and childbirth and to see yes, You know, and, and, and so we do these like weekend trainings for doctors who are already exhausted and they’re already underpaid and they’re already in these, you know, overtly overcrowded hospitals.

And I kind of feel like we’re just missing the point. You know, it’s like, it’s almost like, you know, if you’re in a crowded market and you’re trying to get the vegetable lady to pay attention to you, she doesn’t need training and kindness. What we need is to redesign the market. So that last lady stood, you know? And so I think the same thing applies to maternity spaces. You know, we need to really design. Spaces and healthcare that makes sense to women that are culturally appropriate and where women can arrive and say, no matter what happens to me and my choices and my body and my life experience, these people are here to support me and they’re going to help me through it. And they’re going to give me good care. They’re going to be kind and no matter what I come up with, if “I’m like, I’m 45 and I’m pregnant for the seventh time”, they’re going to say, “great, well then let’s have another baby”. And if I’m, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I needed an abortion. And my parents can’t find out about it” so that people will say,” great.We’ll make sure your parents don’t find out about it.” What do we do to help you and everything that comes up, make it so that, you know, women. Women feel safe. I think, I think one of the huge deterrents, I’m always surprised when they have these clinics. That’s like the HIV clinic, you know, HIV care clinic or the abortion clinic.

And this happens a lot. Like people are scared to go to a clinic that says the abortion clinic. Cause you’re like, well, everyone’s going to know that I’m having an abortion. No. If, if you’re walking into a space that says health for women, you know, you could be getting a mammogram, you could be having a baby. You could be not having a baby. You might be getting fertility care, you know, and I think that we need to take women’s lives seriously, take their requests seriously. And, I think that if we can create allies. Out of designers and designers, who are the architects of hospital spaces, construct asking these questions of like, well, why would you not let people in, why would you not let her family be with her? Or why are you separating this space from that space? That doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense in the continuum of life experiences. So, you know, I think that these are all. Questions that we need to ask ourselves as a society, because I think everybody wants health to be better for everybody. That’s a pretty obvious value.

And I think that anyone who’s designing for health wants, wants the result to be that people walk in and they feel safe and comfortable, you know? So these are all questions we can ask ourselves when I feel comfortable walking in here. What would I feel if I told people if I was in space, would I be honest? And so, you know, I think. I think that midwifery centres can, can help ask these questions and they can kind of help keep pushing the boundaries where we were. We’re constantly reminded that we’re just not doing well enough. We need to keep asking ourselves if we’re really, really serving women’s needs.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah. I guess what you’re saying is. Regardless of whether you’re in the American sense pro-life, or pro-choice, it’s a decision at the end of the day. And these can become places where that decision is not questioned or judged or looked down upon. And regardless of what you decide, you still have a community of, um, midwives or women just being there being like a strong rock. So. Yes for community and yes, for women. This was a pleasure, Chris. Thank you. So, so, so very much for, um, being so open to be here, uh, feeling so comfortable, talking about design and architecture and for your contribution, to be honest, thank you so much.

Cris Alonso
Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to everybody who listened to this, and I hope this opened your eyes and that next time you go get some healthcare, you challenge the design space that you’re in.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.