Stiliyana
Minkovska

Stiliyana Minkovska is a qualified architect (ARB/RIBA), who practises across the wide intercourses of art, architectural, interior, product design, making and human-centred research.

She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2016, where her dissertation was awarded with distinction. Her thesis project focused on pregnancy and childbirth, which was rooted in her personal experience as a young mother. The proposal looked at the deinstitutionalisation of birth, which occurs within the hospital environment in western societies, by turning the birthing mother from a medical object into a celebratory matriarchal reproductive economy through spatial qualities and design.

She qualified as an Architect in 2018 from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

She recently completed a residency programme with the Design Museum, where she advanced further the research she commenced at the RCA. She designed three progressive elements of offerings, which work around the comfort and wellbeing of the birthing mother. The immersive alternative childbirth environment called Ultima Thule was exhibited at the Design Museum, London from January until July 2020. The triptych was then donated to St Thomas’ hospital, where Stiliyana’s birth journey commenced in 2016, to their Home from Home Birth Centre.

Her interest in healthcare with particular emphasis in the maternity wards and the birth centres has also been reflected in her artwork. Most recently she exhibited a series of Erotic Kit for Internal Selfies to capture the antenatal and postnatal conditions of the maternal-female body as a place.

She is studying part-time for a Masters in Research (MRes) programme in Healthcare and Design at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.

Her projects are narrative-based. She combines real scenarios with imaginary settings through thorough story-telling, which evoke macro questions from a micro sampling.