Confini explores the relationship between architecture, care, and limits. It stems from the desire to restore value to family counseling centers, called “consultori” in Italian, which were established in the 1970s as an achievement of the women’s movement. These centers offer health, psychological, and social services related to sexuality, motherhood, and parenthood within a context of proximity and attentive listening.
These are spaces of care and relationship, where fragility and possibility intertwine, and where the human dimension precedes the medical one. Today, however, these places often appear neglected, their deepest potential forgotten.

The project takes shape in the Sant’Erlembardo counseling center in Milan, chosen for its location within the neighborhood and for the latent quality of its reception and waiting areas. Through the site visit, conversations with the staf,f and perceptual analysis, the research explores how architecture can become an instrument of care, capable of accommodating the complexity of the relationships and experiences that pass through the clinic.
This raises a question: how can space restore balance and dignity, accompanying rather than imposing?

This question gives rise to a reflection on boundaries, “Confini” in Italian, understood as a condition rather than a limit. In these counseling centers, boundaries manifest themselves as a tangible reality: they are threshold spaces between body and word, between life that grows and life that is interrupted, between need and care.
In seeking out the boundary, we chose to investigate the duality of space, in the constant tension between what welcomes and what liberates. Seeking it meant attempting to construct its conditions, defining each of its characteristics, while knowing that perhaps it can never be fully grasped.

Confini is also a personal story: the search for the limit as a meeting point between external and internal realities. The video produced as part of the project (https://youtu.be/ee9Pnd6JpX4) expresses this intimate boundary, revealing the quietest and most fragile dimension of the care process.

The boundary is no longer a line, but a condition: time, experience, perception. It is what defines and, at the same time, dissolves. In this project, care becomes the way to cross the boundary.