Mosaic bar takeover
Architect Massimiliano Locatelli is installing ceramic mosaic murals across three floors of SiMa Townhouse — the cocktail‑bar takeover mixes imagery like pecking chickens with tropical‑cocktail motifs as a weeklong installation during Milan Design Week. (wallpaper.com)
Massimiliano Locatelli is turning Milan’s SiMa Townhouse into a ceramic-covered cocktail bar for Milan Design Week 2026. (wallpaper.com) The installation is called SiMa Glazed Bar, and it runs across all three floors of the venue on Corso di Porta Vigentina 12 in Milan. Locatelli Partners says each level works as a separate chapter inside one continuous spatial narrative. (wallpaper.com) (robbreport.it) The surfaces are built from hand-made ceramic tiles that are cut, numbered, painted and kiln-fired before installation in square modules. Robb Report Italia said the tiles are produced in Vietnam, while Wallpaper described the imagery as mixing pecking chickens, tropical cocktails and other mural scenes. (robbreport.it) (wallpaper.com) Milan Design Week 2026 runs from April 20 to April 26, according to Fuorisalone, the citywide program that sits alongside Salone del Mobile. That timing turns a working bar into a temporary exhibition just as hundreds of design events spread across Milan. (fuorisalone.it) (designweekguide.com) The project also revisits a local decorative tradition. Wallpaper pointed to early twentieth-century Milan entryways, including Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s Galleria Strasburgo on Corso Europa 10, as examples of the city’s mosaic-tile heritage. (wallpaper.com) SiMa Townhouse is not a neutral shell for the takeover. Locatelli Partners designed the narrow three-floor venue in 2020 and describes it as “the most narrow townhouse in the center of Milan,” built around three different ways to drink and dine. (locatellipartners.com) That makes the weeklong remake part renovation, part self-reinterpretation by the original architect. DesignWanted listed SiMa Glazed Bar among this year’s food-and-drink activations, a corner of Milan Design Week where bars and restaurants are being used as exhibition spaces as well as hospitality venues. (designwanted.com) (locatellipartners.com) Locatelli Partners, the Milan and New York studio led by Massimiliano Locatelli and Giovanna Cornelio, was founded in 1994 and works across architecture, interiors and product design. At SiMa, that practice is landing in the most public way possible: on the walls of a bar, one drink and one floor at a time. (locatellipartners.com) (wallpaper.com)
