Tactile objects gain traction
Design previews include leather vessels derived from human-body drawings and a three‑storey cocktail bar clad in ceramic mosaic murals, highlighting organic lines and immersive surface work. (yankodesign.com) (wallpaper.com) These projects foreground surface as narrative rather than small decorative accents. (yankodesign.com)
At Milan Design Week 2026, designers are treating touchable surfaces as the main event, not as trim on finished objects. (dezeen.com) Two early previews make the shift plain. Talia Luvaton’s TRACE leather vessels debut when Milan Design Week opens on April 20, and Massimiliano Locatelli’s SiMa Glazed Bar is already open at SiMa Townhouse on Corso di Porta Vigentina, 12. (yankodesign.com) (wallpaper.com) Luvaton, a Tel Aviv-based designer and leather craft artist, built TRACE from observational drawings of the human body. She shapes vegetable-tanned leather by hand with wet-forming and custom molds, using moisture, pressure, and time to set each form. (yankodesign.com) The result is a group of vessels that sit between sculpture and utility, with curves that read more like torsos or muscles than containers. Alongside TRACE, Luvaton is also showing TOHA, SLICE, REBLOOM, and HEALED, a series made with tattoo artists working directly on leather with electric needles. (yankodesign.com) Locatelli’s project scales the same idea up to architecture. Wallpaper reports that Glazed Bar takes over the cocktail bar’s three-storey interior with ceramic mosaic murals, while Zero lists the installation from April 11 to April 26. (wallpaper.com) (zero.eu) The bar was already a vertical space before the takeover. Locatelli Partners describes SiMa Townhouse, completed in 2020, as “three floors and three ways to have a drink and dinners,” and the 2026 installation turns that stacked layout into a continuous ceramic sequence. (locatellipartners.com) (robbreport.it) Wallpaper ties Glazed Bar to a longer craft history, noting that mosaic murals date back to the Roman era and remained common in Milan entryways into the early 20th century. The new installation revives that language inside a working hospitality space instead of a museum or showroom. (wallpaper.com) Milan Design Week runs from April 20 to April 26 across the city, with exhibitions, installations, workshops, talks, and open showrooms. In that setting, both projects push material finish into narrative structure: leather carries the memory of drawn bodies, and ceramic tile organizes how visitors move through three floors. (dezeen.com) (yankodesign.com) (robbreport.it) That makes the week’s tactile turn easy to spot before the fair fully opens: one designer compresses bodily gesture into hand-formed leather, while another spreads hand-laid ceramic across an entire bar. (yankodesign.com) (wallpaper.com)
