The Petronas Towers
Height: 1,483 ft (452 meters)Owners: Kuala Lumpur City Centre Holdings Sendirian BerhadArchitects: Cesar Pelli & AssociatesEngineers: Thornton-Tomasetti EngineersContractors: Mayjus and SKJ Joint VenturesTopping Out: 1998Official Opening: August 28, 1999
On April 15, 1996, the Council on Tall Buildings named the Petronas Towers the tallest in the world, passing the torch to a new continent. Although the project's developers, a consortium of private investors in association with the Malaysian government and Petronas, the national oil company, had not originally set out to surpass Chicago's Sears Tower, they did aspire to construct a monument announcing Kuala Lumpur's prominence as a commercial and cultural capital. In the design of American architect Cesar Pelli they found a winning scheme--twin towers of elegant proportions with a slenderness ratio (height to width) of 9.4--that would capture not only the title but the public imagination.
Pelli's design answered the developer's call to express the 'culture and heritage of Malaysia' by evoking Islamic arabesques and employing repetitive geometries characteristic of Muslim architecture. In plan, an 8-point star formed by intersecting squares is an obvious reference to Islamic design; curved and pointed bays create a scalloped facade that suggests temple towers. The identical towers are linked by a bridge at the 41st floor, creating a dramatic gateway to the city.
The structure is high-strength concrete, a material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction. Supported by 75-by-75-foot concrete cores and an outer ring of widely-spaced super columns, the towers showcase a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile and provides from 14,000 to 22,000 square feet of column-free office space per floo
Other features include a curtain wall of glass and stainless steel sun shades to diffuse the intense equatorial light; a double-decker elevator system with a sky lobby transfer point on the 41st floor to accommodate the thousands of people who use the complex daily; and a mixed-use base featuring a concert hall and shopping center enveloped by nearly seventy acres of public parks and plazas.
In both engineering and design, the Petronas Towers succeed at acknowledging Malaysia's past and future, embracing the country's heritage while proclaiming its modernization. The end result, says Pelli, is a monument that is not specifically Malaysian, but will forever be identified with Kuala Lumpur.
Here are some interesting facts about the Petronas Towers:
On April 15, 1996, the Council on Tall Buildings named the Petronas Towers the tallest in the world, passing the torch to a new continent. Although the project's developers, a consortium of private investors in association with the Malaysian government and Petronas, the national oil company, had not originally set out to surpass Chicago's Sears Tower, they did aspire to construct a monument announcing Kuala Lumpur's prominence as a commercial and cultural capital. In the design of American architect Cesar Pelli they found a winning scheme--twin towers of elegant proportions with a slenderness ratio (height to width) of 9.4--that would capture not only the title but the public imagination.
Pelli's design answered the developer's call to express the 'culture and heritage of Malaysia' by evoking Islamic arabesques and employing repetitive geometries characteristic of Muslim architecture. In plan, an 8-point star formed by intersecting squares is an obvious reference to Islamic design; curved and pointed bays create a scalloped facade that suggests temple towers. The identical towers are linked by a bridge at the 41st floor, creating a dramatic gateway to the city.
The structure is high-strength concrete, a material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction. Supported by 75-by-75-foot concrete cores and an outer ring of widely-spaced super columns, the towers showcase a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile and provides from 14,000 to 22,000 square feet of column-free office space per floo
Other features include a curtain wall of glass and stainless steel sun shades to diffuse the intense equatorial light; a double-decker elevator system with a sky lobby transfer point on the 41st floor to accommodate the thousands of people who use the complex daily; and a mixed-use base featuring a concert hall and shopping center enveloped by nearly seventy acres of public parks and plazas.
In both engineering and design, the Petronas Towers succeed at acknowledging Malaysia's past and future, embracing the country's heritage while proclaiming its modernization. The end result, says Pelli, is a monument that is not specifically Malaysian, but will forever be identified with Kuala Lumpur.
Here are some interesting facts about the Petronas Towers:
Combined the towers have 1,000,000m2 of floor space;- at the 41st and 42nd level a skybridge connects the two towers 170m/558f above the ground. This bridge is 58.4m/192f long, weighs 750 tons and is open for the public since the end of 2000.The entrance is free (closed on Monday!), but only a limited amount of timed tickets (800) is given out each day. Chances are you will have to wait in line quite a while, before you get such a free ticket;and you're only allowed on the bridge for a mere 10 minutes. Worth it?Maybe, but instead a visit to the observatory of Menara Kuala Lumpur is much more interesting,though there is an entrance fee there (of RM15);- the towers have 32.000 windows;- the building costs were US $ 1,2 billion;- the towers were designed to symbolise strength and grace using geometric principles typified in Islamic architecture;- without pinnacle the buildings are 'only' 378m/1,240f tall;- the towers are part of the 100-acre KLCC Development.Other components of the development include the Suria KLCC, a six-story, 93,000 square feet shopping centre(with 270 specialty shops, cinema's and a food arcade), Menara Maxis, Menara Esso, the 20-hectare KLCC Park,a 6,000 capacity Surau, the District Cooling Centres to provide air conditioningand infrastructure works within the vicinity.The whole complex was built on a former horse-racing track;- the towers' complex includes an art gallery, an 840-seat concert hall, and an underground parking lot;the main occupant of the buildings is Petronas, the national oil-company;- though completed in 1998, the buildings were officially opened on August 28th, 1999;- each tower contains 80,000 m3 of concrete in strengths up to Grade 80, almost 11,000 tonnes of reinforcement,and 7,500 tonnes of structural steel beams and trusses.- when standing in front of the building and looking towards the entrance,like seen on the picture above on the left (kl015), tower 2 is the building on the left,and tower 1 is the building on the right.
Above: on this page you can find pictures of two ot the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Towers.They are 452 metres tall (1,483f), have 88 stories, and were completed in 1998.They were the world's tallest from 1997 (when they were topped out) until October 2003.In October 2003 Taipei 101 in Taiwan took over with a height of 509m/1,671f.
Description
Above: on this page you can find pictures of two ot the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Towers.They are 452 metres tall (1,483f), have 88 stories, and were completed in 1998.They were the world's tallest from 1997 (when they were topped out) until October 2003.In October 2003 Taipei 101 in Taiwan took over with a height of 509m/1,671f.
Description
The Petronas Towers are the centrepiece of the mixed-use Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) complex, set in the heart of the commercial district of the city. Rising 452 metres, the towers were certified the world’s tallest buildings by the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in 1996. The complex is at the forefront of technology, with a form derived from an Islamic pattern, and extensive use of local materials. The towers have become a popular example of contemporary architecture in Malaysia, and their elegant form makes them the country’s most significant urban landmark.In 1981 the Malaysian Government undertook the development of a 40-hectare site in the heart of Kuala Lumpur’s emerging business district – the ‘Golden Triangle’. In 1991 an international competition was held for the design of the office tower complex and was won by Cesar Pelli & Associates.The project design is based on the concept of two interlocking squares that form an eight-pointed star modified by placing eight semicircles in the angles of the corners to create more floor space. Each tower rises eighty-eight storeys and provides 218,000 square metres of floor space, including an additional circular ‘bustle’ or annex forty-four storeys high. The towers taper at six intervals, with the walls of the upper levels sloping inwards. Both towers are topped by a conical spire and a 73.5-metre-high pinnacle.The structure supporting each of the towers comprises a ring of sixteen cylindrical columns of high-strength reinforced concrete, placed on the inner corners of the star-shaped plan to form a ‘soft tube’, with the columns linked by arched ring beams, also made of structural concrete. The columns are nearly 2.4 metres in diameter at the base of the building, but taper as they rise through the floors, as well as sloping towards the centre of the towers. At the centre of each tower is a square core, which contains elevators, mechanical shafts and other services, with beams extending out to the perimeter columns. The core occupies 23 per cent of the floor plan – a relatively low ratio in comparison to other skyscrapers. The foundation system of the towers consists of a 4.5-metre-thick piled raft supported on rectangular friction piles varying in depth from 40 metres to 105 metres.The towers are connected at the forty-first and forty-second levels, 170 metres above street level, by a sky bridge, enabling intercommunication between the towers. The structural design of the sky bridge was complex because it had to accommodate differing movements from each tower. The towers are also joined at their base to form a six-level retail and entertainment complex with a central atrium. From the atrium, two ‘streets’, lined with over 300 shops, cafés and restaurants, extend along opposite axes. In addition, the complex includes an 880-seat concert hall, an art gallery, a specialized library and an interactive science discovery centre, as well as a four-storey underground car park for 5,400 cars.Throughout the complex, automatic controls and advanced communication systems reduce energy consumption and promote convenience of use. One such system controls vertical transportation, which is provided by double-deck lifts capable of carrying twenty-six people per deck. The integrated energy-conservation concept of the towers is based on an innovative ‘cool-recovery’ system, which uses heat from exhaust air to power the cooling of outside air as it enters the building. The system reduces the amount of energy required to air condition the building by 50 per cent.The Petronas Towers complex combines modern technology with a sense of cultural identity. It has also introduced new architectural standards to Malaysia in terms of design, construction and technology.
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