Formant Studio reworks a Mexico City residence into Chicago-style tavern

Formant Studio, a Mexico City practice, has opened Nota Tavern, a two-storey Italian-American restaurant inside a former hacienda-style residence in the Escandón I neighbourhood.

The studio designed the interiors and most of the furniture, taking the classic Chicago neighbourhood tavern as its primary reference. Alejandro Valencia, co-founder of Formant Studio, told Dezeen that the brief was explicit: "The main request was to create a faithful interpretation of the neighbourhood taverns of Chicago – the kind of places built less around spectacle and more around familiarity."

What survives from the original building?

The site once held a hacienda-style residence; a later conversion turned it into an apartment building. The owner preserved half of the original house, and Nota Tavern now occupies that portion. Three ornate stone pillars from the former entrance portico remain — Formant stripped their paint and made them the focal point of the main dining room.

How did the studio translate Chicago into Mexico City?

Valencia said the design "translates the character of a classic tavern into a contemporary architectural language." The studio took additional cues from two architects tied to Chicago:

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose clean minimalism shaped the metal detailing
• Frank Lloyd Wright, whose warmer modernism informed the material palette

In keeping with that 20th-century tradition, Formant designed most of the furniture itself: black-stained oak tables, steel bar stools and slim metal sconces. The majority of the dining room is clad in Mexican rosewood panels, which also form custom banquettes upholstered in black Kvadrat textiles.

How does the layout work?

"The shape of the existing space largely determined the furniture layout," Valencia said. "We used the longer walls to accommodate the built-in booths, establishing a clear spatial rhythm while keeping the central area flexible and allowing the dining room to adapt to different group sizes and configurations."

The sequence runs as follows:

• An entrance vestibule holds a host stand
• A metal spiral staircase painted rich brown leads to an upstairs private dining room
• The main dining room opens past the host stand, with a front banquette and a seating bar that opens through an operable window onto the street
• The double-height ceiling exposes white-painted rafters from the former residence
• A mezzanine from the private dining space projects over a row of banquette seating, its high boundary shielding it from the room below
• The bar sits at the back, finished with a mirror backsplash and rosewood millwork

Formant installed a Paxwave sound system throughout. Tables carry sheer white cloths, which read against stained-black chairs and polished grey terrazzo floors. The kitchen sits beneath the private dining room, hidden behind a wall of mirrors, with metal grating on the opposite windows.

What else shapes the room?

Galería Córdoba selected the art and antiques. Street-facing windows pull daylight into the room, with mirrors positioned to diffuse it further.

Formant Studio previously designed its own Mexico City studio, shared with photographer Fabián Martínez, who also shot Nota Tavern. Dezeen named the practice among 11 notable Mexico design studios in 2026.

Nota Tavern extends Formant's reach from studio design into hospitality, and adds a second built commission to a portfolio Dezeen already flagged in its 2026 round-up of 11 Mexico design studios.