At this year’s Design Miami, the design fair that runs in tandem with Art Basel Miami, you’ll find a huge sofa, big enough for at least three ravers (to sprawl out during a K-hole comedown) or two gallerists (to perch on while debating late capitalism). The sofa is upholstered in transparent vinyl and stuffed with clothing printed with a brand name that has come to work like a siren call in the art world: BALENCIAGA.

The sofa was created in collaboration with the brand at the impetus of the designer and architect Harry Nuriev, the Russian-born founder of Crosby Studios, which has been based out of New York for the past two years. “I guess this sofa is the pure result of my dream a few years ago,” Nuriev said in a phone interview last week. “I dreamed about creating this sofa for so long.”

The Balenciaga Sofa by Harry Nuriev in collaboration with Balenciaga. Courtesy of Balenciaga and Crosby Studios. INNA KABLUKOVA

Indeed, this isn’t Nuriev’s first Balenciaga rodeo. At last year’s fair, he showed a wooden air conditioner, a swivel chair, lace curtains, a coat tree, and the kind of baffling corporate copy machine that infuriates office workers the world over—each reading “BALENCIAGA.” (Both the air conditioner and copy machine were carved out of wood, and were in fact bureaus rather than office machinery.) It wasn’t an official collaboration, Nuriev said—the house gave him permission to use the logo, but the pieces were not commercially produced. Instead, the tableau was an office cum living room: a bold and uncanny gesture that made an unreadable judgment on the aesthetics of corporate offices and Soviet Russian homes. In other words: very Balenciaga.

Balenciaga, Nuriev said reverently, “shows things that are pretty standard in a new way. They give basic shapes new life.” He recalled a visit a few years ago to the brand’s Paris store to see the Fall 2017 collection, inspired by mid-priced cars: Rubber floor mats became pencil skirts, seat-belt buckles became dangly earrings, and side mirrors became minaudières. “I held this car-mirror bag and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever held in my hands.’ ” Contemporary art usually commands a price that is prohibitive even to the respectably paid creative cognoscenti, but “this thing you can actually buy,” Nuriev said. The $2,400 price tag on the bag was minuscule compared to the price of an artwork, “and it’s truly a piece of art.” It set him off on the years-long journey that came to full fruition with the sofa. “I was just craving to combine my DNA and the DNA of the Balenciaga house.”