Petronas Towers
| Petronas Towers | |
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 Location in central Kuala Lumpur
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| 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) |
| Main contractor | Tower1: Hazama Corporation Tower2: Samsung Engineering & Construction and Kukdong Engineering & Construction City Center: B.L. Harbert International |
| Cost | $ 1.6 billion [2] |
| Architect | César Pelli |
| Structural engineer | Thornton Tomasetti |
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.
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Comparison with other towers
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.
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).
Tenants of the Petronas Twin Towers
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.
Suria KLCC
Suria KLCC is an upmarket retail podium measuring 1.5 million sq. feet located at the feet of the Petronas Twin Towers. It features mostly foreign luxury goods and high-street labels. Its attractions include an art gallery, a philharmonic theater, an underwater aquarium and also a Science centre.
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]
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.
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]
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.
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]
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 capture and Zeta-Jones's escape.
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, Surya Sivakumar's Ayan and Jeyam Ravi's Thilalangadi.
Gallery
 Foggy tower scene |
 Skyscraper comparison |
 The Petronas Towers, looking upwards |
 From front-central-base entrance |
 Suria KLCC shopping complex at the base of the towers |
 Part of the Suria KLCC shopping complex |
 Front facade of the towers |
 Towers from the water fountain in KLCC Park |
 Towers with Suria KLCC and water fountain |
 Front facade of the towers |
 The towers |
 The towers |
 Looking up from concourse level in Suria KLCC's atrium space |
 View from the public park |
 Galactica Night at KLCC Petronas Twin Towers |
 From the open public children park/playground |
 Kuala Lumpur from Genting Highland Resort |
 The water fountain at the rear entrance of Suria KLCC |
The 41st floor skybridge |
 Towers at night |
 Close up view of the skybridge |
 The twin towers in the rain |
 Petronas Towers at Night |
 Looking up from the base of one of the Towers |
 KLCC park fountain, at night |
 Looking up from the base of one of the Towers at night |
 Petronas Towers at Night |
 A view of the facade details of the towers from the street level |
 Bustle Area Detail. |
 Ceiling Detail at the Lobby |
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]
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- —César Pelli, architect (1995)
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See also
- Petronas
- Menara Telekom
- Skyscraper
- List of skyscrapers
- List of tallest buildings in Kuala Lumpur
- List of twin buildings and structures
- List of tallest buildings and structures in the world
- List of tallest freestanding structures in the world
- Skyscraper Index
References
- ↑ Petronas Twin Towers Official Website - General Statistics
- ↑ "Petronas Twin Towers". Encyclopedia of Things. Glasssteelandstone. January 13, 2010. http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/BuildingDetail/191.php. Retrieved January 13, 2010.
- ↑ Lee, C. Y.; Binder, Georges (2008). Taipei 101. Images Publishing. p. 7.
- ↑ Palmer, Alison Lee (2008). Historical Dictionary of Architecture. from personal experience these towers are a stunning pic of engineering and are an absolute wonder the thought is staggering. Scarecrow Press. p. 209.
- ↑ Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat preamble to High Rise Database: other measurements of height"
- ↑ The Willis Tower. thesearstower.com.
- ↑ Sebestyén, Gyula (1998). Construction: craft to industry. Taylor & Francis. p. 205.
- ↑ Žaknić, Ivan; Smith, Matthew; Rice, Doleres B. (1998). 100 of the world's tallest buildings. Images Publishing. p. 208.
- ↑ Baker Jr, Clyde N.; Drumwright, Elliott; Joseph, Leonard; Azam, Tarique (November 1996). "The Taller the Deeper." Civil Engineering–ASCE. 66 (11): 3A-6A.
- ↑ Petronas Towers Base. thepetronastowers.com.
- ↑ Wee, C. J. Wan-Ling, April Stonghold, James Parpan Almeda (2002). Local cultures and the "new Asia": the state, culture, and capitalism in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 193.
- ↑ Moskal, Greg (2004). Modern Buildings: Identifying Bilateral and Rotational Symmetry. Rosen Classroom. p. 28.
- ↑ Wells, Matthew (2005). Skyscrapers: structure and design. Laurence King Publishing. p. 170.
- ↑ "Information Malaysia." (2005). Berita Publ. Sdn. Bhd.
- ↑ Taranath, Bungale S. (2004). Wind and earthquake resistant buildings: structural analysis and design. CRC Press. p. 748.
- ↑ Chandran, Sheela (August 25, 2005). Documentary on the Petronas Twin Towers. The Star (Malaysia).
- ↑ de Ledesma, Charles; Lewis, Mark; Savage, Pauline (2003). Rough guide to Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei. Rough Guides. p. 132.
- ↑ Frankham, Steve (2008). Malaysia and Singapore. Footprint Travel Guides. p. 68.
- ↑ Moskal, Greg (2004). Modern Buildings: Identifying Bilateral and Rotational Symmetry.i Rosen Classroom. p. 26.
- ↑ Chang, Fu-Kuo (2005). Structural health monitoring, 2005: advancements and challenges for implementation. DEStech Publications, Inc. p. 270.
- ↑ The Petronas Towers Skybridge. thepetronastowers.com.
- ↑ Rowthorn, Chris; Cohen, Muhammad; Williams, China (2008). Lonely Planet Borneo. Lonely Planet. p. 71.
- ↑ Wood, A.; Chow, W. K.; McGrail D. (2005). "The Skybridge as an Evacuation Option for Tall Buildings for Highrise Cities in the Far East." Journal of Applied Fire Science. 13 (2): 113–124.
- ↑ World's Tallest Towers in Malaysia Evacuated After Threats. People's Daily. September 12, 2001.
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 Petronas Towers Lift System. petronastowers.com.
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Wong, Ronald. Using Lift as an Alternative Means of Egress for Evacuation. The Institution of Fire Engineers (Hong Kong Branch).
- ↑ Yoong, Sean (12th September, 2001). World's tallest towers, IBM building in Malaysia evacuated after threats. Associated Press.
- ↑ Fire Forces Evacuation at Malaysia Towers. CBS News. 4th November, 2005.
- ↑ 'Spiderman' scales Malaysia tower "BBC News Online", 1st September, 2009.
- ↑ 'Spiderman’ has another go at Twin Towers. The Star (Malaysia). 20th March, 2007.
- ↑ Databank: Petronas Towers. PBS.
- ↑ Dupré, Julie (2001). Skyscrapers. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. p. 114.
External links
- Petronas Towers official website
- Petronas Towers at Structurae
- Design and construction of the Petronas Towers
Images
- 360-Panorama Petronas Tower
- ArchNet - Drawings, photos and videos
- Digital visualization of Petronas Towers
- Photos, Pictures and other supplementary information on Petronas Twin Towers and Suria KLCC - Kuala Lumpur City Centre by Photography in Malaysia, Malaysian Internet Resources ("MIR")
- Satellite Image at Google Maps
| Records | ||
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| Preceded by Willis Tower |
World's tallest building architectural element 452.0 m (1,482.9 ft) 1998–2003 |
Succeeded by Taipei 101 |
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