[Image: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

Using the design technique of the catenary, a new structure emerges in the church. The Upside Dome is a real size scale model, comprised of hundreds of meters of chain, which is literally and figuratively the counterpart of the unfinished dome.

[Image: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

[Images: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

[Image: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

[Images: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

[Image: "Upside Dome" by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh; photo by Jeroen Verrecht].

Looking at " Upside Dome " by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh , installed inside the St. Michiel Church in Leuven, Belgium, is like seeing the underlying geometric logic of Western space bleed through from a hidden dimension.The project was at least partially inspired, the architects write, by their recognition that the church itself actually has no dome: their intervention "takes this seemingly trivial fact as a starting point and generate[s] the missing dome in a remarkable way."Abstract, bulbous, heavy with itself, this network of chains thus forms an inverted counter-dome—a reflective surrogate, a back-to-front double, an—inside the nave.The actual installation shots are pretty cool, as well: glimpses of the church's innards—its otherwise unseen attics and backspaces—complete with long chains dropped down from above.The final result is both model and realization, then, simultaneously a demonstration and the final product.In a sense, the geometry of gravity itself collides with the ornamental excess of Baroque architecture in a surprisingly appropriate and optically interesting way: the installation suggests a kind of, where emerging nests of curved surfaces take shape, mocking and repeating the logic of the buildings around it.Way back in March 2005, meanwhile, I caught a lecture by architect Mark Goulthorpe at the University of Pennsylvania , where he demonstrated a piece of software that I believe had been produced in-house at his firm; it allowed the architect to model the hanging of chains in virtual catenary curves, and thus to generate a huge variety of possible architectural shapes for future projects. He produced, with the click of a mouse, live there in the lecture hall, new species of curves in space.But the method of analog calculation seen in " Upside Dome "—that is, drooping pieces of chain or string through space until they stabilize—gives force and form to gravity and to the potential architecture tucked away in empty space.