John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Professor Sarah Kenderdine and John Choy have photographed the ceilings of 70 of Mumbai's most beautiful buildings, using an automated rig to create huge one gigapixel composite images. Displayed in a temporary installation called the DomeLab, they're opening eyes to the city's marvels with their immersive art, at once familiar and yet uncanny.

Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue -- Built in 1884 by Jacob Elias Sassoon, the synagogue was constructed in memory to his father. It served a prominent and affluent Jewish community in the city, and at one time the celebration of Yom Kippur called for extra chairs to fit into the packed synagogue.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Home to India's largest public art program, including a 3.2 kilometer art wall with over 7,000 pieces of art, the ceiling is also a stunning creation in and of itself.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
The city's oldest museum and situated in Byculla East, the Dr Bhau Daji Lad was once known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Known for its rare fine and decorative art collection, it won UNESCO's 2005 Award of Excellence for cultural preservation after a five-year restoration.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Located in the south of the city, the Victorian Gothic-style grade 2A listed building features panoramic views of the city from its viewing gallery 225 feet up.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Built in the twentieth century, the monument was once used as a grandiose landing point for British governors and prominent individuals during the time of the British Raj. Eighty-five feet high and constructed from basalt, the arch was once a symbol of colonial might and is still a popular tourist attraction.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Blessed and opened to the public in 1095, the church received cathedral status in 1964. Gothic in style and featuring two towers, the ceiling is covered in frescoes and geometric patterns painted by Jesuit lay-brother A. Mocheni of Bergamo with the help of two assistants.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Mumbai is home to one of India's largest Jainist populations, and the Adishwarji temple is among the city's most stunning places of worship, containing idols aplenty and covered in tableaux from scriptures.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
A Roman Catholic Basilica constructed in a semi-Gothic design, the place of worship features a relatively plain ceiling, while the walls bear beautiful murals telling the story of the life of Mary.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Inaugurated in 2009, the pagoda mimics the form of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar. Twenty-nine meters high, the space underneath is large enough to fit 8,000 worshipers.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
The museum played host to Kenderdine's DomeLab installation, and is known for its combination of art and history on display. Built in the Indo-Saracenic style, the early twentieth century construction won a UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2010.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
A Hindu temple located in Prabhadevi and devoted to Ganesh, the two-century-old construct was first consecrated in 1801 and houses the black stone idol of Shree Siddhivinayak.
John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
Part of the University of Mumbai, the convocation hall was deisgned by Sir George Gilbert Scorr and funded by Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Readymoney, a Parsi entrepreneur and business tycoon.

Story highlights

Curators are using new digital tools to document architecture

Composite images of Mumbai's interiors are projected in a temporary structure called DomeLab

70 of the city's buildings are featured at "Look Up Mumbai" exhibition

CNN  — 

Architecture is a precious thing; delicate and worth preserving. Whether by the slow slip into decrepitude or wanton destruction at the hands of terror, our heritage is at risk.

That’s the driving force behind “Look Up Mumbai,” an installation overseen by Professor Sarah Kenderdine of the University of New South Wales, following on from past projects “Look Up Kyoto,” “Cupola” and “Heaven’s Gate.”

John Choy and Sarah Kenderdine
The view from inside the DomeLab.

Kenderdine, director of the Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre at the university, is part of a new wave of curators drawing on digital tools to document architecture, whilst expanding our understanding and appreciation of it in the process.

She has given TED talks in the past and this year addressed the World Economic Forum on both the threats and potential solutions the digital world offers to the many conundrums architectural historians face.

Photographing the ceilings of Mumbai’s iconic structures using a motorized rig, Kenderdine along with photographer John Choy have created vast composite images a gigapixel in size, projecting them in a temporary structure called the DomeLab – the highest resolution creation of its kind in the world.

Look Up Mumbai

“Look Up Mumbai” invited the city’s inhabitants to enter the immersive DomeLab and find a fresh perspective on sites both familiar and yet uncanny. Seventy of the city’s buildings, from Jain temples to Catholic cathedrals, airports to nightclubs, have been translated into beguiling fisheye images to be gazed up at, as if looking at the stars.

Kenderdine describes her creations as “urban celestial imagery,” and hopes that the installation will “focus the multi-cultural richness and diversity of these structures as objects of aesthetic allure, technological wonder and empyrean fascination.”

Can 3-D mapping preserve antiquities?

Quoting philosopher Villem Flusser, she says that, “we live in two worlds: one that is given and the other that is provoked by the attention that we pay to it.”

“We seldom look up to contemplate,” Kenderdine argues, “Look Up Mumbai sets out to relocate these ceilings in the other world.”