Cathedral Basilica of the Holy Family

The guide to the Cathedral Basilica of the Holy Family in Nairobi starts with a correction: those twin spires look like carved stone but are poured concrete, cast as a single skeleton in under sixteen months. It follows the architect Dorothy Hughes, one half of a firm where women rarely signed cathedral drawings, as she designed something new to replace a modest 1904 church that Nairobi had long outgrown. British contractor Mowlem broke ground in June 1960 on a budget that, by the time the concrete skeleton was finished, had already run well past what anyone had planned. Look up at the stained glass set in stainless steel rather than lead as you take in the scale of it.