This paper presents a new approach to the direct numerical simulation of particle flows. The basic idea is to use a local analytic representation valid near the particle to “transfer” the no-slip condition from the particle surface to the adjacent grid nodes. In this way the geometric complexity arising from the irregular relation between the particle boundary and the underlying mesh is avoided and fast solvers can be used. The results suggest that the computational effort increases very slowly with the number of particles so that the method is efficient for large-scale simulations. The focus here is on the two-dimensional case (cylindrical particles), but the same procedure, to be developed in forthcoming papers, applies to three dimensions (spherical particles). Several extensions are briefly discussed.