Hannes Peer: Terrain

During Milan Design Week 2026, from 20 to 26 April, Officine Saffi Lab presents “Terrain”, a large-scale ceramic installation designed by Hannes Peer. Conceived as a monumental high relief, the work explores the architectural potential of clay through a stratified composition in which ceramic masses collide, overlap and realign, generating a dynamic system shaped by tension, displacement and rhythm.

Developed through an ongoing collaboration between the architect and the ceramic studio, the project reflects a research into the historical and architectural applications of ceramics. Peer’s practice engages references from Italian design and architecture, reactivating them as a framework for contemporary exploration. The work positions ceramics as a relational medium between past and present, surface and depth, construction and landscape.

The installation results from an extensive technical process involving advanced ceramic engineering, material experimentation and bespoke glaze development. Its chromatic range—mineral reds, ochres, pale blues and saturated tones—draws on diverse landscapes, contributing to a surface that appears as a layered, almost geological field. Each element functions as a micro-landscape shaped by material reactions and the unpredictability of firing.

“Terrain” proposes a renewed approach to ceramics within contemporary architectural space, where structure and surface operate simultaneously as sculptural and spatial elements