CN #09 – Officine

The word OFFICINE on the façade of Cagliari’s former Tobacco Factory preserves the memory of its original function. This was where mechanics, electricians, carpenters and other skilled workers kept the factory and its machinery running.

A workshop is where knowledge meets action. As long as a machine works, the expertise behind it may remain invisible; when it breaks down, knowledge, experience and the ability to find a solution emerge.

But a workshop can also exist without machines: a place where ideas are tested, transformed and rebuilt through collective knowledge.

Today the machines are gone and the noise has faded. One word remains: OFFICINE. Not only the name of what this place once was, but of a way of thinking, making and transforming things.