Mario Trimarchi's Samotracia is a copper-bodied motorcycle created in collaboration with Italian metalworking house De Castelli, revealed during Milan Design Week. It is not a motorcycle designed to be ridden so much as a design object built to transform over decades: the entire body is copper, a material chosen specifically for its oxidation behaviour, and the finished state of the Samotracia will not exist for approximately 25 years, when the copper surface reaches the deep, patinated green that defines aged bronze and, most famously, the Statue of Liberty.
De Castelli: Metalworking Beyond Furniture
De Castelli is a Veneto-based company with generations of expertise in metal craftsmanship, primarily applied to furniture and interior objects. For Milan Design Week, they wanted to demonstrate the reach of their material knowledge and fabrication capability by producing something entirely outside their usual category. A motorcycle provided the right kind of tension: a functional machine transformed into a design statement through material and surface.
The choice to work with Mario Trimarchi, an Italian architect and designer based in Milan, came from a shared interest in objects that carry meaning beyond their immediate function. Trimarchi's practice operates across product design, architecture, and conceptual work, and his approach to the Samotracia reflects that breadth: this is a motorcycle conceived as a reflection on time, not transportation.
The Form: A Gemstone That Moves
Trimarchi's formal decision was to reject the smooth curves of conventional motorcycle bodywork in favour of a multifaceted geometry that refracts light like a cut gemstone. Where most motorcycle design prioritises aerodynamic flow and organic form, the Samotracia is angular and crystalline, its copper panels catching and breaking light differently depending on the viewing angle. The effect is closer to a mineralogical specimen than to a vehicle, which is precisely the intention.
The faceted body follows the underlying structure of the motorcycle beneath, so the form is not arbitrary: each panel responds to the mechanical reality of the object it covers. The result is a design that bridges the gap between craft object and engineering, between a thing made to move and a thing made to be contemplated.
For the full documentation of the project, De Castelli's official Samotracia project page provides the original brief and material process detail. Designboom's coverage of the reveal, Mario Trimarchi designs copper motorcycle for De Castelli, documents the Milan Design Week debut.
Copper as Time: The 25-Year Transformation
The conceptual core of the Samotracia is its relationship with time. Trimarchi has described the obsession with time passing as the generator of the project. Copper oxidises predictably but slowly: in an outdoor or indoor environment, the surface will move through a sequence of warm browns and oranges before eventually reaching the iconic verdigris green of aged copper. The full transformation takes approximately 25 years.
This means the Samotracia cannot be finished. Every year it exists, it changes. The object you see in 2025 is different from the one revealed in 2018 and different again from what it will be in 2040. The owner of the Samotracia is not acquiring a fixed design object but entering into a long relationship with a material process. There is no other motorcycle that operates on this timescale.
Design Objects and Motorcycles at TheArsenale
The Samotracia sits at the intersection of two categories TheArsenale has always curated alongside one another: motorcycles as design objects and applied art as a category that extends beyond conventional gallery media. The finest custom and concept motorcycles share a sensibility with furniture, sculpture, and architecture, and the best of them are collected alongside those disciplines rather than separately from them.
Explore the motorcycles collection for the most significant custom, electric, and concept bikes available through TheArsenale, browse the TheArsenale Gallery for fine art and mobility objects, or discover the home and interior collection for design objects that carry the same level of craft ambition as the Samotracia into everyday living spaces.
