PROJECT

BREATHE WITH ME — Basel Edition
Art Basel Week · 17–22 June, 2025 · Basel, Switzerland

BREATHE WITH ME — is coming to Basel, Switzerland for Art Basel Week — is an immersive, multisensory installation for wellbeing and community. Designed and conceptualized by the Swiss-born, New York-based experience designer Annabelle Schneider.

Originally commissioned by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, the installation has already been shown internationally – including in New York, Barcelona, Tashkent, and Gainesville – and now returns in an evolved form to its place of original inspiration: Switzerland.

In May 2025, BREATHE WITH ME was named a Finalist and Honoree of the NYCxDESIGN Awards, recognized as one of the year’s most outstanding installations and exhibitions.

A BREATHING COCOON FOR PRESENCE
The installation invites visitors into a soft, cocoon-like space that offers stillness, reflection, and reconnection. Guided by an original soundscape composed by Luc Oggier and activated through intimate live performances by Braths and OSOMO, the experience unfolds through breath, light, scent, and an amorphous, inflatable textile sculpture that rises and falls rhythmically – an homage to the calming breath that unites us all.

Entering the cocoon offers a shift in perspective: away from an overstimulated, visually driven, and increasingly AI-smoothed world, into a space of deceleration and grounding.

“In a time when we are flooded by sensations and accelerated by artificial systems yet rarely touched on an emotional level, we need places that allow us to process again,” says artist and designer Annabelle Schneider. “Multisensory elements – sound, scent, movement – gently guide us into a quieter state. The Bubble is not a spectacle, but a temporary home for what finds no space in everyday life: stillness, sensation, and conscious presence.”

The breathing spatial sculpture was developed in collaboration with the Swiss studio Luft & Laune, which played a key role in shaping both the form and technical realization, and significantly contributed to the architectural language of the project.

At the entrance of Singer Klub stands the Breathing Drop – a scent-based sculpture developed by Annabelle in collaboration with the Swiss fragrance house Luzi. Inspired by the architecture of the breathing space, it translates the theme of breath into an olfactory experience.

The fragrance FOVET, specially composed by Luzi, makes breath tangible on a deeply emotional level. Here, scent becomes an additional layer of breath – invisible, yet emotionally resonant – guiding visitors through the space with subtle accents.

SOFT CLUBBING – RETHINKING SPACES OF GATHERING
Set in an unexpected venue – a club – the Basel edition reimagines how we gather. Through the lens of well-being, sensual presence, and emotional resonance, Soft Clubbing replaces strobes and bass with rhythm and atmosphere. Here, architecture breathes and connects, offering a radical rethinking of the club not as a site of excess, but as a space for inner tuning and intentional togetherness.

We are witnessing the beginning of a soft cultural shift – one that moves consciously away from sensory overload and toward deeper, more present modes of being together. As traditional nightlife fades and the desire for meaningful, multisensory experiences grows, BREATHE WITH ME offers a “third space” – somewhere between ritual, retreat, and reconnection.

In an age of urgency, disconnection, and visual saturation, BREATHE WITH ME makes space not for doing, but for being – inviting us to rethink the ephemeral nature of design as a tool for intimacy, sensory awareness, and collective calm.