The Scuola Superiore d'Arte Applicata all'Industria del Castello Sforzesco or SUPER is a

vocational school A vocational school (alternatively known as a trade school, or technical school), is a type of educational institution, which, depending on the country, may refer to either secondary education#List of tech ed skills, secondary or post-secondar ...

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, in

Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...

in northern Italy, established on 2 July 1882. It combines the preservation of traditional techniques with the exploration of new disciplines in the field of

applied arts The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univ ...

History and organization

The school was founded in 1882 at the suggestion of the Italian Industrial Association, specifically by Cavaliere

Antonio Beretta Antonio Beretta (17 April 1808, in Milan – 14 November 1891, Rome) was the first mayor of Milan under the Kingdom of Italy from 1860 to 1867. He was appointed Senator for life by Victor Emmanuel II in 1862. He was a member of the Società Stori ...

, and designed by architect

Carlo Maciachini Carlo Francesco Maciachini (; sometimes spelled Maciacchini; 2 April 1818 – 10 June 1899) was an Italian architect and restorer. Born near Varese, he studied in Milan, where he also realized some of his most important works, most notably the C ...

and painter Luigi Cavenaghi, with

patronage Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, art patronage refers to the support that princes, popes, and other wealthy and influential people ...

from the

Municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

of Milan and Milan's

Chamber of commerce A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network. For example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to a ...

. Over the course of its history, the academia has progressively updated its

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curriculums or curricula ) is the totality of student experiences that occur in an educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experi ...

, introducing new craft disciplines and adapting its courses to changes in the

labour market Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labou ...

and

technological advancement Technological change (TC) or technological development is the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of technology or processes.From ''The New Palgrave Dictionary otechnical change by S. Metcalfe. •biased and biased techn ...

s. More recently, courses and events have been implemented to support the launch and development of students' artistic careers. The school's curriculum encompasses a range of art, craft and digital disciplines, including:

comics a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...

digital art Digital art, or the digital arts, is artistic work that uses Digital electronics, digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960 ...

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...

illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation, or visual explanation of a text, concept, or process, designed for integration in print and digitally published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, vi ...

letterpress printing Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing for producing many copies by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against individual sheets of paper or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable t ...

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

(with a focus on its application within the artistic and cultural fields),

stained glass Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...

tapestry Tapestry is a form of Textile arts, textile art which was traditionally Weaving, woven by hand on a loom. Normally it is used to create images rather than patterns. Tapestry is relatively fragile, and difficult to make, so most historical piece ...

and

woodworking Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked b ...

. Currently shares premises in via Alex Visconti with Scuola Cova.

Locations

1882–1905

Pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings; * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

in the

Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli ("Indro Montanelli Public Gardens"), formerly known as Giardini Pubblici and Giardini di Porta Venezia (and renamed after journalist and writer Indro Montanelli in 2002) are a major and historic city park in Mi ...

(Public Gardens of Porta Venezia) housing the Museum of Industrial Art. Now occupied by the

Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano (Milan Natural History Museum) is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when the naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was the taxono ...

1906–1999

Sforza Castle The Sforza Castle ( ; ) is a medieval fortification located in Milan, northern Italy. It was built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, on the remnants of a 14th-century fortification. Later renovated and enlarged, in the 1 ...

. Since July 15, 1906, following the restoration by

Luca Beltrami Luca Beltrami (November 13, 1854 – August 8, 1933) was an Italian architect and architectural historian, known particularly for restoration projects. Biography Early life and education Beltrami was born in Milan then part of the Austrian Em ...

, it has housed part of the Applied Arts Collections of the Civic Museums of the Sforza Castle.

Present

Campus Visconti, in Milan. Building shared with Scuola Cova. Campus Giusti, in

. Building shared with Arte&Messaggio.

Headmasters

* Luigi Cavenaghi (1882–1918) * Alfredo Melani (1898–1923) * Esodo Pratelli (1924–1945) * Giuseppe Boattini (1946–1965) * Carlo Paganini (1978–1993) * Luigi Timoncini (1994–2003) * Pietro Nimis (2004–2017) * Stefano Mirti (2017–2024) * Andrea Lazzaroni (from 2024)

References

External links

Official website
Art schools in Italy Schools in Milan