Stadium Merdeka

This guide to Stadium Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur traces the ten-day rush to finish an open-air stadium in 1957, after Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman found no venue in the city big enough for Malaya's independence ceremony. It follows the American architect handed the job and the workers who raised four 120-foot floodlight towers without a single crane, on a site that had been a cemetery turned golf course. Listen for how the roof above you compared to anything built before it.