It’s 8:32 A.M. on the Upper East Side, and I’m blinking through flashing strobe lights as a DJ blasts pulsing club mixes from an elevated booth in the corner. No, this isn’t some kind of weird daytime rave: It’s 305 Fitness, the Miami-inspired, hip-hop-influenced workout class that’s taken the Lululemon-wearing sets of New York, L.A., Boston, and D.C. by storm in recent years. As an impossibly sprightly blonde in a neon sports bra yells commands at the room while twerking, I fear I—a notably bad dancer and not an especially fit person in general—may collapse. Beside me, though, the designer Sasha Bikoff is all smiles, grinning as she does a series of high kicks to the sounds of Cardi B, bobbing her head in time with the rap verse.
Bikoff—a native of the Upper East Side who spends quite a bit of time in Miami—has loved 305 since its debut; she’s long been a regular at the 8th Street studio, near her downtown home. “I just love the culture,” she says. “This is not a normal workout brand.”
So, when 305 founder Sadie Kurzban reached out to the designer after being dazzled (as so many were) by her Memphis staircase at last year's Kips Bay show house, Bikoff took on the renovation of the new location without a second thought—despite a tight budget and a two-month timeframe.
"I grew up on the Upper East Side, and I used to go to gyms all the time then," Bikoff tells me, cool as a cucumber, at the end of our class, while I lean against a wall for support and sip water. "I was thinking about all the young people here who go to schools here. My little cousin and all her friends come here—they’re in eighth grade! And the moms," she laughs. "Moms just want to party!"
The party begins on the outside, where 305’s façade stands out among the brick and steel of Third Avenue. "It has such curb appeal," Bikoff explains of the Deco-style building, whose white stucco is punctuated with 305's signature pink, green, and yellow. "We wanted to replicate a Deco Ocean Drive hotel," the designer says. It helped that the brand's three signature hues already had what Bikoff calls "that Miami Vice feel."
"I think, you know, you look at an Equinox, it’s so blah," she says. "But I think the era of exercise studios is changing. There’s such a branding opportunity here."
Perhaps the best example of this is just inside the studio's reception area, where visitors are greeted by a graphic wallpaper that was the result of Bikoff's signature multireferential process. "Sadie wanted a signature wallpaper that would correlate to the brand but also have this Miami Vice Art Deco feel," she explains. "So, I started to think of New York in the '80s and this aerobics craze—that’s such a vibe right now. Then I was looking at Tom Wesselmann’s portraits of women." She sketched her initial ideas and passed them along to 305's in-house graphic designer, who translated them into a colorful, dynamic wall covering.
"So, basically, it's Tom Wesselmann's dancers in the 305 colors and in the dance moves. See," Bikoff says, pointing to a figure in the upper corner, "that one’s twerking. And this one is twerking down here!"
To offset the wilder side demonstrated with the wallpaper, Bikoff swathed the reception desk in Artistic Tile's Pavimento terrazzo—but, instead of one with the '70s colors that material traditionally brings to mind, stuck with black-and-white. Above the desk, she framed three photographs of one of her inspirational starting points: Miami beachfront hotels—which should feel right at home next to the two potted palms in the studio's front window.
If this is all sounding fabulously retro, good—it's meant to. But Bikoff also wanted to ensure the space would feel of-the-moment. "When Sadie first came to me, she showed all this Memphis stuff, like my Kips Bay staircase, and said she wanted something like that," Bikoff recalls. "But she also wanted it to be contemporary, so it didn’t get too Saved by the Bell."
After all, she points out (and the beats still echoing in my head won't let me forget), "it’s a contemporary class—they play Top 40."
The space moves forward in time as visitors move up to the second floor, via a staircase painted in a rainbow of neon sherbet hues ("Yeah, the stairs again, I know," quips Bikoff as we ascend). Benjamin Moore's Mixed Fruit, Tropical Pool, and Good Morning Sunshine line alternating steps and then explode into a kaleidoscope of stripes on the walls and ceiling surrounding the stairs.
"So we have the 80s aerobic thing going on downstairs, but this gets a bit more contemporary, with the neon and the light installation from Anthropologie," Bikoff explains of a cluster of iridescent pendants and an Emin-esque neon sign read that reads: ladies is pimps too. "The idea is that this should energize and invigorate."
Once visitors step onto the second floor, the walls have turned to light pink, and a disco ball spins lazily from the ceiling. A custom banquette upholstered in that kind of glittery nylon most often seen in 1980s diners (which Bikoff found at Mood) spans the far wall. "I wanted the lounge to be kind of clubby, like you’re walking into a club but you’re in a workout class," the designer says.
Lest you think Bikoff neglected any square inch of the studio, the bathrooms (one downstairs and two upstairs) have a particularly compelling origin story. "You know how I'm always doing research," the designer says, whipping out her phone to pull up an image. "I came across this Jean-Pierre Raynaud bathroom and I was obsessed with it" (she posted a shot of the space, from Raynaud's La Maison de La Celle-Saint-Cloud in 1974, on Instagram). "I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do something like that."
Using pink, blue, and yellow, respectively, Bikoff swathed the bathrooms in similar fashion, then added coordinating trash cans and pops of Memphis via shower curtains and clocks from Society6. "We did this with such a low budget," Bikoff says. "These tiles were so cheap but they have such a huge effect, especially with the black grout."
The resulting jewel-box rooms, like the space at large, are pure Bikoff: born from a mashup of aesthetic influences, executed by a distinctly daring eye, and presented as a manifestation of, well, fun. Reclining (at last) into the shimmering pink vinyl in the lounge, the designer sums up: "You know, same schtick: Have fun with design, be crazy—it's a party!" And my legs are sure to have a hangover.
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