KUALA LUMPUR — Before Malaya had even become independent, it was already building the place where independence would be declared.

The foundation stone for Stadium Merdeka was laid in February 1957, months before the country was due to end British rule.

Construction was accelerated and the stadium was completed in just six months, opening on August 30 — one day before Merdeka.The following morning, it became the stage for one of the defining moments in the country’s history.

At Stadium Merdeka, Malaysia’s first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman proclaimed the independence of the Federation of Malaya.It was an appropriate beginning for a country about to embark on a very different kind of construction project.

Over the next eight years, Kuala Lumpur acquired a national stadium, international-class hotels, Parliament House, a national museum, a national mosque, a national language institution, a major water-supply dam and a new international airport.

Some were grand symbols. Others were decidedly practical.

Together, however, they reveal what a young country thought independence should look like.

It was not enough to have sovereignty on paper.

Our fledgling country needed institutions to govern itself, infrastructure to support its growing population and economy, and national symbols through which its people could begin to see themselves as part of something larger than the territories and communities they had inherited.

The result was a burst of construction that turned independence into something that could be seen, entered, used and experienced.