Inside Alcova Miami debut | Wallpaper

Jumping across the pond for their first edition outside of Milan, Alcova smartly chose Miami. For founders Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima, this crossroad of diversity and unconventional lifestyle made it the perfect location. For the locals, it offered a taste of better things to come for the ever-evolving Miami Art Week. Known for showing in unexpected derelict spaces during Salone, the collective of young designers, studios, and innovators, checked-in at the Selena Gold Rush Motel— a funky 50s iconic restoration and one of many that are becoming more popular along Biscayne Boulevard.

Inside Alcova Miami debut

(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)

Alcova naturally embodied the Miami mix of chill and speed that makes it such a fun place to have nowhere to be. The long poolside corridors accompanied by the gentle hum of wall unit ACs were a nice backdrop for the throngs of lost sweaty souls drawn into random rooms, moving to the tune of the designers’ siren call, all in search of unexpected treasure.

Leonard Bessemer’s LA based studio Objects for Objects deserves a prize for the wild and wonderful ‘Trophy Room’. Using otherwise discarded trophy parts, taste-maker Bessemer, skillfully repurposed them into quirky and elegant chairs, tables, mirrors, floor lamps, sconces and a statement bookshelf with trophy toppers as detailed jewels. 

(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)

Alcova Project Space’s theme of ‘Digital Ornamentalism’ hammered that virtual aesthetic back into the physical world with meticulously designed objects crafted with long-enduring techniques of old, merging the tangible and intangible.

China born designer Jialun Xiong’s first solo space, ‘Before the Eclipse’, made a statement with her signature dark moody gradient, bathing the space with meditative vibes, blurring the lines between stunning light compositions and beautifully abstracted devices floating in negative space.

(Image credit: Piergiorgio Sorgetti)

‘Uncharted’ – made up of Forma Rosa Studio, Caleb Ferris, NJ Roseti, Studio Sam Klemick, Tristan Louis Marsh, and Wallpaper Projects – presented strangely familiar and firmly functional objects cohabiting harmoniously in one, moody, psychedelic den.