Iceland's Hallgrímskirkja church took 41 years to build and was designed to echo the basalt lava columns that cool into hexagonal pillars across the island, so its concrete facade rises in stepped ridges meant to mimic the very rock the country is made of.

Iceland's Hallgrímskirkja church took 41 years to build and was designed to echo the basalt lava columns that cool into hexagonal pillars across the island, so its concrete facade rises in stepped ridges meant to mimic the very rock the country is made of.

Hallgrímskirkja rises 74.5 metres over central Reykjavík in a fan of white concrete ridges that step outward from the belltower like a frozen splash of lava, and the architect who drew it, Guðjón Samúelsson, spent the last years of his life sketching a church meant to look as if it had cooled out of the ground rather than been poured onto it. Construction began in 1945, the year Iceland was still finding its footing as a new republic, and the la…