Amber Winick is a writer, an author, a coach and group facilitator, and an independent design historian. She has spent her whole career immersed in birth and child development from one angle or another.
She’s also a mother of three, a New Yorker living in London, a co-housing enthusiast, a crafts novice, and nature fanatic.
Designing Motherhood
Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births is a book (MIT Press/Penguin Random House, 2021) and internationally touring exhibition.
Both book and exhibition are about how design has influenced reproductive health and how we care for ourselves and our babies.
When was the menstrual cup created? And what will the future birthing chair look like? Designing Motherhood examines how design has influenced human reproduction over the past 150 years to enable, facilitate, or prevent our arrival into the world.
From breast pumps, and baby monitors to medical tools and sleep aides, the project explores art, photography, fashion, city planning, policy and product design, posters, advertisements, and architecture from various cultural and geographical backgrounds.
While being born is a universal human experience, the designs that shape it are not. Designing Motherhood invites you to consider why and how we have developed the designs around us, and the political, economic, and social implications they have on all of us.
