Petronas Towers

The Petronas Towers (Malay: Menara Berkembar Petronas), also known as the Petronas Twin Towers and colloquially the KLCC Twin Towers, are a pair of 88-storey supertall skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, standing at . From 1998 to 2004, they were officially designated as the tallest buildings in the world until they were surpassed by the completion of the Taipei 101 in 2004. The Petronas Towers are the world's tallest twin skyscrapers and remained the tallest buildings in Malaysia until 2019, when they were surpassed by The Exchange 106. The Petronas Towers are a major landmark of Kuala Lumpur, along with the nearby Kuala Lumpur Tower and Merdeka 118, and are visible in many places across the city. The Petronas Towers' structural system is a tube in tube design, invented by architect Fazlur Rahman Khan. Applying a tube-structure for extreme tall buildings is a common phenomenon. 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. 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. The circular sectors are 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 below the surface. The construction of the superstructure commenced on 1 April 1994.