Giving shape to the void

On the second day of May, 1949—just nine days shy of his 78th birthday—Mariano Fortuny drew his final breath. The genius who had conjured light into fabric and revolutionized the worlds of textiles, theatre, lighting, and fashion, was gone. Left behind was his beloved Henriette—his wife, muse, and artistic counterpart, the visionary behind the iconic pleated dress that bore his name.

In her grief, Henriette reached across the Atlantic to the only person she trusted to carry on Mariano’s legacy: designer Elsie McNeill Lee, Fortuny’s sole representative. But as fate would have it, tragedy struck again. The night before Elsie was to depart for Venice, her husband Alfred died in a car crash on the Triborough Bridge in New York. When she finally arrived in Venice, the weight of shared sorrow between the two women was nearly unbearable. Having just lost both her husband and her mentor, Elsie declined Henriette’s request and retreated to her summer refuge in Forte dei Marmi.

But grief, like architecture, reshapes us.

Henriette would not let the story end there. She persuaded Elsie to establish a new mission in her life—not just to the company, but to the city of Venice. Elsie sold her seaside sanctuary to create a Venetian residence of her own at the Fortuny compound at the factory on the Giudecca, known simply as The Palazzina. To reimagine the space, she enlisted the celebrated Venetian architect Luigi Vietti, whose design featured an audaciously curved staircase—the only one of its kind in Venice—spiraling at the center of the home like a strand of DNA, around which everything else would take shape.

Here, amidst windows, walls, and furniture decorated in the famed fabrics she was now responsible for, Elsie married Count Alvise Gozz and became Countess Elsie Lee Gozzi. The life of this American designer from Fayetteville, North Carolina, had entwined with Fortuny so completely that she became part of its legend. She did more than preserve Mariano’s vision; she translated it. After all, she was the one responsible for bringing his fabrics out of the cloisters of theatres, churches, and museums and ushering them into the intimate spaces of people’s homes.

The Palazzina became a living gallery—a magnetic destination for artists, designers, and architects drawn to its enigma and elegance. For over 35 years, it served not only as a home, but as a manifesto: a space that showed the world how to live with beauty, history, and intention.

In the final years leading up to the Countess’ death on 15 April 1994, the Palazzina fell silent. Our family made it our Venetian home as we embraced our role as stewards of Fortuny's legacy. But inside, time stood still—the curtains and wallcoverings remained undisturbed, the artwork untouched. Perhaps it was reverence for her vision that held us back. Or perhaps it was simply that all our energy went into the monumental task of reviving production and restoring the factory and property, a four-acre compound surrounded by water on three sides. Whatever the reason, the house remained asleep for decades.

Until now.

In preparation for the 2024 Biennale Arte, the Fortuny Palazzina was meticulously restored and reawakened. It stands once again as a beacon—not merely of design, but of how architecture itself defines space, sculpts experience, and channels the invisible currents between history and modernity, light and texture, Now, for the 2025 Biennale Architettura, it has been reimagined yet again.

Architecture is not just structure; it is memory made tangible, energy made legible. It shapes the choreography of life—how we move, how we feel, how we interact with the world around us. And here in Venice, at the threshold of the Palazzina, this truth finds its most poetic expression.