Petronas Towers

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Petronas Towers

Location in central Kuala Lumpur

Type Office
Location Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Owner KLCC
Started 1992
Completed 1998
Height 451.9 metres (1482.6 feet)
Antenna spire 451.9 m (1,482.6 ft)[1]
Roof 378.6 m (1,242.1 ft)
Top floor 375.0 m (1,230.3 ft)
Floor count 88
Floor area 395,000 m2 (4,252,000 sq ft) (1 & 2)
Elevator count 78 (1 & 2)
Tower1: Hazama Corporation
Tower2: Samsung Engineering &
Main contractor Construction and Kukdong Engineering &
Construction
City Center: B.L. Harbert International
Cost $ 1.6 billion [2]
Architect César Pelli
Structural
Thornton Tomasetti
engineer

The Petronas Twin Towers (Malay: Menara Berkembar Petronas) (also known as the Petronas
Towers or just Twin Towers), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were the world's tallest buildings
from 1998 to 2004, when their height was surpassed by Taipei 101. The towers remain the tallest
twin buildings in the world.

Contents
[hide]

 1 Comparison with other towers

 2 History
 3 Tenants of the Petronas Twin Towers
o 3.1 KLCC park
o 3.2 Skybridge
o 3.3 Lift system
 o 3.4 Service building
 4 Notable events
 5 Popular culture
 6 Gallery
 7 Quotations
 8 See also
 9 References
 10 External links

[edit] Comparison with other towers

In accordance to CTBUH, the pinnacles contributed to the overall height of the towers, thus
surpassing the Willis Tower.

The Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world until Taipei 101 was
completed in 2004, as measured to the top of their structural components (spires, but not
antennas).[3] Spires are considered integral parts of the architectural design of buildings, to which
changes would substantially change the appearance and design of the building, whereas antennas
may be added or removed without such consequences. The Petronas Twin Towers remain the
tallest twin buildings in the world.[4]

The Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and the World Trade Center towers were each
constructed with 110 occupied floors – 22 more than the Petronas Twin Towers’ 88 floors. The
Willis Tower and the World Trade Center’s roofs and highest occupied floors substantially
exceeded the height of the roof and highest floors of the Petronas Twin Towers. The Willis
Tower’s tallest antenna is 247.4 ft taller than the Petronas Twin Towers’ spires. However, in
accordance to CTBUH regulations and guidelines,[5] the antennas of the Willis Tower were not
counted as part of its architectural features.[6] The spires on the Petronas Towers are included in
the height since they are not antenna masts. Therefore, the Petronas Twin Towers exceed the
official height of the Willis Tower by 10 m, but the Willis Tower has more floors and much
higher square footage.

[edit] History
Designed by Argentine architects César Pelli and Djay Cerico under the consultancy of Julius
Gold, the Petronas Towers were completed in 1998 after a seven year build and became the
tallest buildings in the world on the date of completion.[7] They were built on the site of Kuala
Lumpur's race track.[8] Because of the depth of the bedrock, the buildings were built on the
world's deepest foundations.[9] The 120-meter foundations were built within 12 months by Bachy
Soletanche and required massive amounts of concrete.[10]. Its engineering designs on structural
framework were contributed by Haitian engineer Domo Obiasse and colleagues Aris Battista and
Princess D Battista.

The 88-floor towers are constructed largely of reinforced concrete, with a steel and glass facade
designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art, a reflection of Malaysia's Muslim religion.[11]
Another Islamic influence on the design is that the cross section of the towers is based on a Rub
el Hizb (albeit with circular sectors added to meet office space requirements).[12] Tower 1 was
built by a Japanese consortium led by the Hazama Corporation while Tower 2 was built by
Samsung C&T and Kukdong Engineering & Construction, both South Korean contractors. The
sky bridge contract was completed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction. The notable event
was that the South Korean Samsung C&T started construction later than the Tower 1 but
completed building faster and became the first.

Due to a lack of steel and the huge cost of importing steel, the towers were constructed on a
cheaper radical design of super high-strength reinforced concrete.[13] High-strength concrete is a
material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction; however,
it makes the building twice as heavy on its foundation than a comparable steel building.
Supported by 23-by-23 meter concrete cores[14] and an outer ring of widely spaced super
columns, the towers use a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile
and provides 560,000 square metres of column-free office space.[15] Below the twin towers is
Suria KLCC, a shopping mall, and Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, the home of the Malaysian
Philharmonic Orchestra.

Other buildings have used spires to increase their height but have always been taller overall to
the pinnacle when trying to claim the title. In the aftermath of the controversy, the rules
governing official titles were partially overhauled, and a number of buildings re-classified
structural antenna as architectural details to boost their height rating (even though nothing was
actually done to the building).
[edit] Tenants of the Petronas Twin Towers

A skybridge connects the two towers

An inside view of the skybridge

Tower One is fully occupied by Petronas and a number of its subsidiaries and associate
companies, while the office spaces in Tower Two are mostly available for lease to other
companies.[16] A number of companies have offices in Tower Two, including Huawei
Technologies, Accenture, AVEVA, Al Jazeera English, Carigali Hess Bloomberg, Boeing, IBM,
Khazanah Nasional Berhad, McKinsey & Co, TCS, HCL Technologies, Krawler, Microsoft, The
Agency (a modeling company) and Reuters.

[edit] KLCC park

Main article: KLCC Park

Spanning 17 acres (69,000 m2) below the building is the KLCC park with jogging and walking
paths, a fountain with incorporated light show, wading pools, and a children's playground. Suria
KLCC is one of the largest shopping malls in Malaysia.[17]

[edit] Skybridge

The towers feature a skybridge between the two towers on 41st and 42nd floors, which is the
highest 2-story bridge in the world.[18] It is not attached to the main structure, but is instead
designed to slide in and out of the towers to prevent it from breaking during high winds.[19] The
bridge is 170 m (558 ft) above the ground and 58 m (190 ft) long, weighing 750 tons.[20] The
same floor is also known as the podium, since visitors desiring to go to higher levels have to
change elevators here. The skybridge is open to all visitors, but free passes (limited to 1700
people per day) must be obtained on a first-come, first-served basis.[21] Visitors are only allowed
on the 41st floor as the 42nd floor can only be used by the tenants of the building.[22]

The skybridge also acts as a safety device, so that in the event of a fire or other emergency in one
tower, tenants can evacuate by crossing the skybridge to the other tower.[23] The total evacuation
triggered by a bomb hoax on September 12, 2001[24] (the day after the September 11 attacks
destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City) showed that the bridge
would not be useful if both towers need to be emptied simultaneously, as the capacity of the
staircases was insufficient for such an event. Plans thus call for the lifts to be used if both towers
need to be evacuated, and a successful drill following the revised plan was conducted in 2005.

[edit] Lift system

The main bank of Otis Lifts is located in the centre of each tower. All main lifts are double-
decker with the lower deck of the lift taking passengers to odd numbered floors and upper deck
to even numbered floors. To reach an even-numbered floor from ground level, passengers must
take an escalator to the upper deck of the lift.[25]

From the ground floor, there are three groups of lifts. The "short haul" group of 6 lifts take
passengers to floors between level 2/3 and level 16/17. The "mid haul" group of six lifts take
passengers to floors between level 18/19 and level 37/38. There is also a set of shuttle lifts that
take passengers directly to levels 41/42. To get to levels above 41/42, passengers must take the
shuttle lifts, then change to lifts to the upper floors. These connecting lifts are directly above the
lifts that serve levels 2 to 38. The pattern now repeats with the upper levels, one set serving
levels 43/44 to 57/58 and one set serving levels 59/60 to levels 73/74.[25]

Apart from this main bank of lifts, there are a series of "connecting" lifts to take people between
the groups. Unlike the main lifts, these are not the double-decker type. Two lifts are provided to
take people from levels 37/38 to levels 41/42 (levels 39 and 40 are not accessible as office
space). This spares someone in the lower half of the building from having to go back to the
ground floor to go to the upper half of the building.

The lifts contain a number of safety features. It is possible to evacuate people from a lift stuck
between floors by manually driving one of the adjacent lifts next to it and opening a panel in the
wall. It is then possible for people in the stuck lift to walk between lift cars.[26] During an
evacuation of the buildings, only the shuttle lift is allowed to be used, as there are only doors at
levels G/1 and levels 41/42; therefore should there be a fire in the lower half of the building, this
enclosed shaft would remain unaffected. Firefighter lifts are also provided in case of emergency.
[26]

[edit] Service building

The service building is to the east of the Petronas Towers and contains the services required to
keep the building operational, such as dissipating the heat from the air-conditioning system for
all 88 levels in both towers.
[edit] Notable events
Thousands of people were evacuated on 12th September, 2001 after a bomb threat was phoned in
the day after the September 11th attacks destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
in New York City. Bomb Disposal squads found no bomb in the Petronas towers but they
evacuated everyone. Workers and shoppers were allowed to return three hours later, around
noon. No-one was hurt during the evacuation.[27]

On the evening of 4th November, 2005, a fire broke out in the cinema complex of the Suria
KLCC shopping centre below the Petronas Twin Towers, triggering panic among patrons who
joined screaming in the thick, acrid smoke. There were no reports of injuries. The buildings were
largely empty (except the shopping mall, Suria KLCC) because of the late hour; the only people
involved were moviegoers and some diners in restaurants.[28]

On the morning of 1st September, 2009, French urban climber, Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using
only his bare hands and feet and with no safety devices, scaled to the top of Tower Two in just
under 2 hours after two previous efforts had ended in arrest.[29] On 20th March, 1997, police
arrested him at the 60th floor, 28 floors away from the "summit." He made a second attempt on
20th March, 2007, exactly 10 years later, and was stopped once again on the same floor (though
on the other tower).[30]

[edit] Popular culture

The Petronas Towers were a setting for some scenes in the 1999 film Entrapment starring Sean
Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.[31] It ends in a dramatic pursuit of the two stars by the
Pasukan Gerakan Khas, eventually leading to Connery's escape and Zeta-Jones's capture.

The towers were depicted in flames for a few seconds in the future-set film Children of Men.

A dynamic aerial shot of the towers at 4:00 pm is the first image of the popular American
television series 24. That is, the towers are the first thing that we see in the first episode of the
show.

In the episode "Bound and Buried", in Life After People: The Series, the towers are shown
collapsing 500 years after people due to corrosion and the weakening of the concrete columns.

The towers are displayed in Rise of Nations, where it is in the background of the Information
Age icon.

American singer Jesse McCartney's 2004 Malaysian album cover Beautiful Soul showed the
Petronas Twin Towers in the inset.

The towers also feature in three levels of the game Hitman 2: Silent Assassin where the player
travels from one tower to another using the sky bridge, though it is unlike the real sky bridge;
instead of being a narrow passageway, the sky bridge is wide and entered by breaking a panel of
glass.

The PS2 game Burnout Dominator features the Twin Towers as Spiritual Towers. Episode 22
from the anime series Cowboy Bebop shows what closely resembles the Petronas Twin Towers
being blown up by a terrorist. This was taken off the air for a short time post-11/9.

The Petronas Towers are also a major setting in the 2006 Bollywood film, Don - The Chase
Begins Again, starring Shahrukh Khan and 2005 Kollywood film, Anniyan, directed by S.
Shankar.

Also, in the 2007 movie, Billa starring Ajith, Nayanthara, Namitha, a remake of the 1980 classic
Billa by Rajnikanth, the Petronas Twin Towers are being seen as a major setting.

It also can be seen in Joseph Vijay's Kuruvi and Surya Sivakumar's Ayan.

[edit] Gallery
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random images of the article subject; please improve or remove the section accordingly,
moving freely licensed images to Wikimedia Commons if not already hosted there.
Pictures of Petronas Twin Towers

The Petronas Towers, From front-central-

Foggy tower scene Skyscraper comparison
looking upwards base entrance

Suria KLCC shopping

Part of the Suria KLCC Front facade of the Towers from the water
complex at the base of
shopping complex towers fountain in KLCC Park
the towers
Towers with Suria
Front facade of the
KLCC and water The towers The towers
towers
fountain

Looking up from Galactica Night at

View from the public
concourse level in Suria From the flyover bridge KLCC Petronas Twin
park
KLCC's atrium space Towers

Kuala Lumpur from

From the open public The water fountain at
Genting Highland The 41st floor
children the rear entrance of
Resort skybridge
park/playground Suria KLCC

Close up view of the The twin towers in the Petronas Towers at

Towers at night
skybridge rain Night

Looking up from the KLCC park fountain, at Looking up from the Petronas Towers at
base of one of the night base of one of the
Night
Towers Towers at night
A view of the facade
Ceiling Detail at the
details of the towers Bustle Area Detail.
Lobby
from the street level

[edit] Quotations
A quote by the building's main architect:

"According to Lao Tse, the reality of a hollow object is in the void and not in the walls that
define it. He was speaking, of course, of spiritual realities. These are the realities also of the
Petronas Towers. The power of the void is increased and made more explicit by the pedestrian
bridge that ... with its supporting structure creates a portal to the sky ... a door to the infinite."[32]

—César Pelli, architect (1995)

[edit] See also