Hallgrímskirkja

Guðjón Samúelsson began drawing Hallgrímskirkja in 1937 and died in 1950, thirty-six years before it was consecrated. The competition brief of 1929 had asked for room for 1,200 people and a tower tall enough to carry the broadcasting service Iceland was about to acquire; the tower stands 73 metres, taller than anything else in Reykjavík, and broadcasters use it still. Guðjón took its form from stuðlaberg, Iceland's columnar basalt, and from Icelandic mountains and glaciers. The church rose slowly around that idea: the crypt consecrated as a hall in 1948, a second hall in the tower in 1974, the building itself in October 1986. The Klais organ came six years later, with 72 stops and 5,275 pipes.