BornHouse
The first maternity homes/hospitals in Russia and the world in general made their appearance in the mid XVIII century, and were initially for those women who wanted to give birth 'in secret', 'illegitimately' or 'not wanting to keep the child'. All other women, naturally enough, gave birth at home.
'Secrecy' has been maintained behind the closed doors of the maternity homes even up to the present day, for outwardly they were not in the least different from other houses in which people lived or convalesced. In the female body Nature created the perfect form for conception and carrying of a new life. For long years babies were born in natural surroundings until people began building places to live in. From those long ago times the architect creating places of worship, burial vaults, museums and villas, have not thought of anything more adequate than nature for giving birth to new life, apart from the medical conveyor belt. How newborn babies perceive (hear, see, or smell) the space in which they first see the light of day is an open question. Whether the new architectural form should be anthropomorphic of the newborn is a different question. We must not forget that apart from normal boys and girls, children with autism or serious handicap, and conjoined twins may also be born.
In any event, BornHouse, the name of the exhibition, is only a metaphor of form for the birth of a new form. Participants are not asked as a matter of course to design a genuine maternity home. Participants are entitled to submit for the exhibition any object (found or designed) which corresponds to the name and trope of the exhibition, with the desirable condition that 'the exhibit' is comparable in terms of weight and dimensions with the height and weight of a newborn child.
