petronas towers

Description

Petronas Towers, also known as Petronas Twin Towers and KLCC Twin Towers is a 88-story, 451.9-meter-tall supertall skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the world's tallest twin skyscraper. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH)'s official definition and ranking, they were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 when they were surpassed by Taipei 101, also in 2020, they were surpassed by Merdeka 118 as the tallest building in Malaysia. The Petronas Towers remain the tallest twin towers in the world. They are a major landmark of Kuala Lumpur, along with nearby Kuala Lumpur Tower and Merdeka 118, and are visible in many places across the city. The cross section of the Petronas Towers is based on a Rub el Hizb, albeit with circular sectors similar to the bottom part of the Qutub Minar. The towers were designed by Argentine-American architect César Pelli. A distinctive postmodern style was chosen to create a 21st-century icon for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Planning on the Petronas Towers started on 1 January 1992 and included rigorous tests and simulations of wind and structural loads on the design. Seven years of construction followed at the former site of the original Selangor Turf Club, beginning on 1 March 1993 with excavation, which involved moving 500 truckloads of earth every night to dig down 30 metres (98 ft) below the surface. The construction of the superstructure commenced on 1 April 1994. Interiors with furniture were completed on 1 January 1996, the spires of Tower 1 and Tower 2 were completed on 1 March 1996, 3 years after its construction was started, and the first batch of Petronas personnel moved into the building on 1 January 1997. The building was officially opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad on 31 August 1999. The twin towers were built on the site of Kuala within 12 months by Bachy Soletanche and required massive amounts of concrete. As a result of the Malaysian government specifying that the buildings be completed in six years, two construction consortia were hired to meet the deadline, one for each tower. Tower 1, the west tower (left in the top-right photograph) was built by a Japanese consortium led by the Hazama Corporation (JA Jones Construction Co., MMC Engineering Services Sdn Bhd, Ho Hup Construction Co. Bhd and Mitsubishi Corp) while Tower 2, the east tower (right in the top-right photograph) was built by a South Korean consortium led by the Samsung C&T Corporation (Kukdong Engineering & Construction and Syarikat Jasatera Sdn Bhd). Early into construction a batch of concrete failed a routine strength test causing construction to come to a complete halt. All the completed floors were tested but it was found that only one had used a bad batch and it was demolished. As a result of the concrete failure, each new batch was tested before being poured. The halt in construction had cost US$700,000 per day and led to three separate concrete plants being set up on the site to ensure that if one produced a bad batch, the other two could continue to supply concrete. The sky bridge contract was completed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction. Tower 2 (Samsung C&T) became the first to reach the world's tallest building at the time. Lumpur's race track. It was the tallest structure in Malaysia at the of its completion. Test boreholes found that the original construction site effectively sat on the edge of a cliff. One half of the site was decayed limestone while the other half was soft rock. The entire site was moved 61 metres (200 ft) to allow the buildings to sit entirely on the soft rock. Because of the depth of the bedrock, the buildings were built on the world's deepest foundations. 104 concrete piles, ranging from 60 to 114 metres (197 to 374 ft) deep, were bored into the ground. The concrete raft foundation, comprising 13,200 cubic metres (470,000 cu ft) of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54 hours for each tower. The raft is 4.6 metres (15 ft) thick, weighs 32,500 tonnes (35,800 tons) and held the world record for the largest concrete pour until 2007. The foundations were completed Due to the huge cost of importing steel, the towers were constructed on a cheaper radical design of super high-strength reinforced concrete. 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 as a comparable steel building. Supported by 23-by-23 metre concrete cores 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[ Below the twin towers is Suria KLCC, a shopping mall, and Petronas Philharmonic Hall, the home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Facts about Petronas Towers

• • Thousands of people were evacuated on 12 September 2001 after a bomb threat the day after the September 11 attacks destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Bomb disposal squads found no explosives in the towers, but they nevertheless evacuated the premises. Workers and shoppers were allowed to return three hours later, around noon. No one was hurt during the evacuation. .
• • On the evening of 4 November 2005, a fire broke out in the cinema complex of the Suria KLCC shopping centre below the Petronas Towers, triggering panic among patrons
• 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.
• • On the morning of 1 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. In his first attempt on 20 March 1997, .
• police arrested him at the 60th floor, 28 floors away from the "summit". The second attempt on 20 March 2007, exactly 10 years later, was also stopped on the same floor, though on the other tower.

Details Of This Palace

1	construction		:		March 1, 1993
2	Old name		:		KLCC Twin Towers
3	material		:		high-strength, steel-reinforced concrete
4	Length		:		451.9 metres (1,483 feet)
5	Height		:		452 m
6	Width		:		diameter of 46m.

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