Visit at Fondazione Officine Saffi
Milanese Project
In 2011, Laura Borghi, a dynamic Milanese design figure, founded Fondazione Officine Saffi, a nonprofit platform like no other and her dream project. Forging a dialogue between clay, design, objects, and installations, the foundation has emerged as Milan’s “temple of clay.”
Set in an expansive, renovated 19th-century former glassworks in the historic heart of Milan’s Sarpi district, this airy, light-filled space is devoted to a single segment of the arts: contemporary ceramics. Here, the entire scope of ceramic art is represented: promotion of new research, experimentation, and interpretation in clay; classes and other educational activities; a residency program; publications; and a special prize, all embodying the multi-layered identity of contemporary ceramics. In short, Fondazione Officine Saffi is a place where anyone interested in ceramics — makers, educators, critics, collectors — comes together. But it has one more important dimension, one badly needed in the design industry: it is here that designers, architects, artists, and fashion houses have works produced in clay. Some of the objects you’ve seen in the home sections of the world’s leading fashion houses may well have been crafted by the team of makers based here.
Given ceramics’ current place in contemporary culture, the Foundation’s presence is powerful. Clay has come to encompass an enormous body of work, rich and globally diverse, spanning a multitude of technical, material, and narrative approaches. Ceramics is everywhere today, and there is often no strict boundary between the disciplines that shape it. Fondazione Officine Saffi captures its current presence in the most dynamic and contemporary way.
