Waiting areas as places of encounter between therapy and society.

Numerous debates have emerged on the role of architecture in physical and mental health, especially in the wake of the pandemic emergency. It became clear that the design and planning of our homes and cities influenced dealing with emergencies at an individual and collective level, facing the limits of the physical and social body and of their way of life. The physical body was forced to acquire a new spatial dimension, new proxemics, emphasising the difficulties of adaptation for those who, every day, beyond the pandemic, have to deal with a different perception of the environment surrounding them. This invites us to reflect on the importance of rethinking public spaces as a process of inclusion, both for people with atypical sensitivity and as a form of empathic openness to meeting others. The paper illustrates some theories and design examples, taken from a PhD research study in progress, in which this double empathy can manifest itself. The study identifies the waiting rooms of certain therapeutic facilities for individuals with cognitive disabilities (and mental disorders). The aim is to lead to a reflection on how we could imagine new forms of proximity and redistribution of care services that would guarantee different degrees of integration according to individual needs: possible meeting points between therapy and society, learning to consider deficiencies, as they are often understood, as mere differences and manifestations of alterity.