The circle and the line
Valentina Di Chiara (b. 1993) is an Italian architect, filmmaker, and researcher based in Paris.
Working at the intersection of spatial practice, documentary cinema, and critical research, her work explores the relationship between the fabrication of space and the construction of its inhabitants’ identity, with a particular focus on contemporary urban and social issues.
— Trained as an architect at the Polytechnic School of Milan and École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris‑Malaquais , Valentina also studied documentary filmmaking under the mentorship of director Gilles Boustani. This dual formation grounds her practice in both spatial analytical thinking and narrative form.
— She explores how governmental apparatus, designed to provide support, often reproduce exclusion through language, spatial design, and administrative opacity. Her work asks: What does it mean to inhabit a system that fails to see you? What forms of architecture and representation can respond to this erasure?
— Since 2019, she has collaborated with publishing houses such as Éditions Cosa Mentale–Caryatide and has exhibited her work across academic and cultural institutions in France.
— In 2019, she was awarded a research grant from École d'architecture de la ville & des territoires Paris-Est.
— In 2024–2025, she was an architect-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, supported by an Artistic Research and Creation Grant from the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Paris.
— Her work continues to be particularly drawn to the frictions between large-scale systems and the intimacy of daily life, the tension between what cities promise and what they actually deliver.
In a society that glorifies productivity and self-sufficiency, what space is left for those whose autonomy is fading, not by choice, but by age? "The circle and the line" is a spatial and intimate filmic investigation into the institutional frameworks of late-life support, focusing on the overlooked yet growing population of older adults. Through the lens of a Parisian “Résidence autonomie”, a public housing typology for seniors living independently, this project explores how aging questions the way cities are designed, inhabited, and governed.
My work sits at the intersection of architecture and documentary film, grounded in spatial justice, accessibility, and the right to remain. I explore how public systems, designed to protect, often reproduce exclusion through bureaucratic language, administrative opacity, and ageist design.
Focusing on "Résidence Saint-Simoniens" in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, I filmed how architecture mediates daily rituals of dependence and dignity. The residence faces a public square informally reclaimed by its inhabitants, blurring the lines between institution and home, policy and intimacy, private need and collective space.
Moving forward, I aim to expand the lens beyond senior housing toward broader urban questions: how do cities support, or fail to support, their most vulnerable residents? How can design respond to the silent violence of procedural neglect? My work seeks to render institutional dispositifs with intimacy, examining how language, age, and social origin intersect with spatial access and agency.
Initiated in 2024 during a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and funded by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, "The circle and the line" began with fieldwork, writing, and a short film. It now aims to expand into a broader inquiry across countries: can cities become environments of continuity, care, and interdependence?