“I wanted to take people out of the fair and teleport them to a collectors living room,” proclaims DLN Member Sasha Bikoff of her vision for the Chubb VIP Lounge at this year’s Art Basel Miami fair, which opened this week. For inspiration, Sasha looked to iconic collectors like Helena Rubenstein and Peggy Guggenheim, then pulled in an eclectic mix of furniture, lighting, art, and accessories to create an imagined living space.
“I imagined this as the living room of a patron of the arts with eccentric, maximalist style,” she says. In signature Sasha fashion, stylistic influences range from Memphis Milano with the desk she designed for Abner Henry (debuted at High Point Market this year) to European antiques from Newell Gallery and modern pieces sourced at Eclectic Patina in Palm Beach.
It was also important to incorporate nods to the fair’s host city: The Fromental wallpaper she used—in a pattern designed by DLN Member Timothy Corrogan— “has a classical European sensibility but the color palette is very Miami and tropical and bright.” Similarly, Sasha’s own Disco Dot rugs are “an homage to the disco era but they also really nod to the nautical deco architecture of Miami,” she explains.
There were plenty of custom elements, too, like the Studio M light fixtures and a backgammon table devised with Elevate—a popular attraction in the booth. “I wanted it to feel immersive so I’m so happy people have actually been playing backgammon,” says Sasha, who reported there was even a line for the table as the lounge was getting busy.
The finishing touch to the lounge is the inclusion of work by students at the New York Academy of Art, which is the recipient of a fellowship from Chubb. Sasha paid a visit to the school to see the artists at work before kicking off the design process, so the featured pieces were truly incorporated into her vision. “Their work gives the mix of living with emerging art and also with antiques—it makes it feel like a true collectors’ space.”
This is the second year that Chubb has looked to the DLN to level up its Art Basel presence; last year, the company worked with San Francisco-based Member Noz Nozawa, who devised a neon-hued space with graphic wallpaper and Lutron lighting for the lounge. As Sasha sees it, it’s the perfect collaboration.
“Chubb really let my freak fly,” she says. “Their partnership with the DLN makes so much sense because they get us designers. They are around collectors and creatives; they work with private collections in homes so they really responded to this idea of transporting people to a living room within the fair.”