 |
As of January 2000, Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers hold the title as the tallest buildings in
the world. Both towers reach a total height of 1,483 feet (452 meters) measured from the ground
to the tip of the masts. However, with 88 stories, Petronas cannot claim the highest occupied floor.
That honor is still held by Chicago's Sears Tower, with 110 stories. |
|
The towers, which were completed in 1998, took five years to construct. They were built on the site of
a former horse-racing track. |
|
Architect Cesar Pelli's vision for the twin towers was chosen from an international design competition
held in 1991. The specifications for the project didn't demand that the towers become the tallest buildings
in the world, just that they be beautiful. |
|
Pelli's design evoked the developers' desire to express the "culture and heritage of Malaysia" and to construct
a monument announcing Kuala Lumpur's prominence as a commercial and cultural capital. |
|
The design is based on an Islamic Arabesque and uses repetitive geometrics
characteristic of Muslim architecture. An eight-point star formed from two
squares at the heart of each tower represents the relationship between heaven
and Earth. |
|
The twin towers' namesake, Petronas, is the Malaysian state-owned oil company, whose headquarters is located
in the buildings. |
|
Builders used indigenous materials in the towers' construction, and for the core structural support they chose
a high-strength concrete that is three times stronger than normal concrete and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction. |
|
More than 7,000 people took part in the twin towers' construction. |
|
For two and a half days trucks poured concrete into the foundation every 90 seconds nonstop, eventually depositing
a total of 17,000 cubic yards. |
|
A 160-foot, 750-ton skybridge links the two towers at floors 41 and 42. The solid-steel bridge took three days
and nights to jack into place and suffered two lightning strikes in the process, which blew out the lift controls.
The bridge is fireproof and offers an alternate escape route if one tower should catch fire.
Each tower contains 2 million square feet (213,750 square meters) of office space, equal to 48 football fields. |
|
The complex also contains an art gallery, an 840-seat concert hall and a prayer room called a surau. No one lives
in the buildings. |
|
The towers are sheathed in 78,000 square yards of tinted windows. All of the glass laid flat would cover five city
blocks. Pelli designed the windows to repel the tropical heat by limiting their height and using projecting steel
pipes as shields. |
|
There are 29 double-deck passenger elevators in each tower. In order to save space, elevators at the top levels share
shafts with those below. A total of 76 lifts serve the towers. |
