Venice, a silent laboratory for architecture
Venice is a silent laboratory of architecture. It is not immediately visible, yet it is true. Constraints are extreme and leave little room for the new, but if we think about social housing, restored interiors designed by contemporary architects and the Biennale pavilions, the list becomes substantial.
Our work on timeless pattern design often refers to architecture. Many masters quietly guide our choices and inspire objects, from Aldo Rossi to our Mies fabrics, to our constant research and revaluation of Gio Ponti’s work reflected in pieces such as our Pastel pattern.
Today we share a recap of our favorite Venetian architectures and end with a provocation to underline what is missing.
A direct line between East and West is visible in the timeless work of Carlo Scarpa. His relationship with gardens and the spirit of the Rising Sun appears in several Venetian interiors, such as Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Today we focus on Fondazione Masieri.
Conceived as a house of architecture and completed in 1983, it has an incredible story. The first project was by Frank Lloyd Wright, never realized because it did not respect the façade constraints along the Grand Canal. Scarpa succeeded because he knew those constraints and chose to focus on the interiors, leaving the façade intact.
It became a residence for international architecture students, combining public and private spaces and workshops over three floors. Today, thanks to IUAV University of Venice and Galerie Negropontes, it reopens by appointment. We are in love with the cylindrical bathrooms in the private rooms.
Fondazione Masieri, Venezia. © Gabriele Bortoluzzi | IUAV
If we speak about contemporary architecture in Venice, we must look to Giudecca. From Campo di Marte with Alvaro Siza, Aldo Rossi and Carlo Aymonino to Gino Valle’s intervention between 1984 and 1986 behind Sacca Fisola (opening image).
In Valle’s work, industrial memory is neither quoted nor regretted but reworked into an autonomous grammar. The compact layout, essential materials, collective organization of space and attention to domestic scale create a building that does not try to impose itself yet becomes essential within the urban fabric.
Giudecca stops being perceived as a periphery and becomes a field of experimentation where memory and project nourish one another.
What is still missing is a female architectural perspective in the city. The last Swiss Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2025 exposed this absence by superimposing Lisbeth Sachs’s 1958 Kunsthalle onto Bruno Giacometti’s 1952 Swiss Pavilion at the Giardini.
It forces us to confront how Venice might look today if that stratification had been possible from the beginning. Female absences matter. Perhaps we should rethink these interventions starting from this critical overlap, imagining an urban future in which the work of women architects is not an exception to be reactivated but a structural and recognized presence in the city.
Swiss Pavilion, 2025, Venezia. Installation view. Gaëtan Bally - Keystone.
