Haoxuan Yan, MArch '23

ARCH 611: Inhabiting the Axis Mundi: A Vertical Monastery in Florence, Italy

This six-week studio involved designing a contemporary convent for 50 Benedictine sisters in the heart of ancient Florence, Italy. The private monastic programs of sisters’ cells, refectory, library, choir, chapel, chapter house and colloquium, a place of retreat and shadow, was elevated off the public ground plane and into the sky, engaging the shifting horizon line of Paul Klee and transforming the traditionally horizontal monastic program into a habitable axis mundus—the vertical axis connecting the earth to the heavens.