SiMa’s Three‑Storey Mosaic
Architect Massimiliano Locatelli has transformed SiMa Townhouse in Milan with ceramic mosaic tile murals that cover the bar’s three‑storey interior, mixing pecking‑chicken imagery and tropical motifs. (wallpaper.com) The installation is running as part of Milan Design Week’s Fuorisalone programming and is being framed as a playful revival of ancient mosaic craft inside a nightlife setting. (livingetc.com)
Massimiliano Locatelli has wrapped Milan’s SiMa Townhouse in ceramic mosaics, turning the bar’s full three-storey interior into a temporary design installation for April 2026. (wallpaper.com) Wallpaper reported the project as “Glazed Bar,” open during Milan Design Week at SiMa Townhouse on Corso di Porta Vigentina 12. The intervention covers the cocktail bar with ceramic mosaic murals across all three levels. (wallpaper.com; simatownhouse.com) The imagery mixes pecking chickens with tropical plants, and the surfaces were built from hand-made tiles that were cut, numbered, painted and kiln-fired before assembly. Zero and Robb Report Italia both described the work as a ceramic takeover staged for Milan Design Week 2026. (zero.eu; robbreport.it) The installation lands as Milan’s annual design week is about to overtake the city again. Independent guides and event listings place Milan Design Week and Fuorisalone programming in late April 2026, when showrooms, bars and palazzi across Milan are repurposed as exhibition spaces. (designweekguide.com; dezeen.com) That setting helps explain why a nightlife venue is being used as a design site. Livingetc included SiMa among its Milan Design Week coverage, while Forbes described the week as a citywide event that pulls more than 300,000 visitors through the fairgrounds alone and spreads installations across Milan. (livingetc.com; forbes.com) Locatelli is not an outside guest dropped into an unrelated venue. SiMa Townhouse is a Locatelli Partners project, and the studio’s site says the narrow central Milan building was already conceived as a three-floor drinking and dining space with site-specific interiors. (locatellipartners.com) Wallpaper framed the new work as a return to mosaic after decades out of fashion, with a lineage that reaches back to the Roman era. Zero cast it more broadly as a tribute to ceramic storytelling traditions stretching from ancient Greece to imperial China. (wallpaper.com; zero.eu) The result is less a new bar than a short-run skin for an existing one: three floors, cocktails, and walls treated like a mural surface. In Milan in April, that is often the point. (wallpaper.com; simatownhouse.com)
