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Petronas Tower PDF
Petronas Tower PDF
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Henry Petroski
For two decades, the 110-story Sears Tower The Federation ofMalaysia is a southeast Asian
stood as the tallest building in theworld. country of about 20million people, thevast major?
Topping out at 1,454 feet above ground lev? ity of whom live inWest Malaysia, located just
el?almost as tall as a string of five football fields above the equator on theMalay Peninsula, be?
would be long?the bundle of nine steel tubes tween Thailand to thenorth and Singapore to the
standing just outside Chicago's Loop could be south. (As established in 1963, the federation in?
said to have cast a shadow over all other sky? cluded Singapore, but it seceded in 1965.) The two
scrapers since its completion in 1974.New York's states of East Malaysia are situated to the east,
World Trade Center, the 1,368- and 1,362-foot-tall across the South China Sea on Borneo, the third
twin towers completed only a year earlier, held largest island in theworld. Kuala Lumpur, the cap?
the record as tallestbuildings foronly a brief time. ital ofMalaysia, is served by a modern North
Before that, theEmpire State Building, at 1,250 feet South Expressway that puts Singapore within a
tall even without itsbroadcasting towers?which, five-hourdrive. The city's Subang Airport has di?
like those of the Sears Tower, do not count as part rect flightsthroughout theworld and hourly flights
of the building proper?held theworld height thatdepart forand arrive fromSingapore, and pas?
record forover four decades. Completed in 1931, sengers get a bird's eye view of lush golf courses
the Empire State then surpassed the one-year-old among rubber trees?a sign of the changes that
Chrysler building, which at 1,046 feet tall had have been takingplace inMalaysia, which has been
been the firsttobreak themagical 1,000-footmark. described as ''predominantly aMalay Islamic state
Before then, theWoolworth building, a 792-foot with strongChinese and Indian influences."
tallGothic cathedral of commerce paid for in cash
A Vision of the Future
by the profits from its namesake's chain of five
and ten-cent stores, had stood as the world's In the 1980s, theMalaysian economy was based
tallest building foralmost two decades. on commodities such as palm oil, rubber and tin.
Skyscrapers?so named since the 1880s,when of a
However, with the rise headed
government
Chicago's 100-foot-tall buildings were marvels by the strong-willed and powerful Prime Minister
of contemporary structural engineering?seem
Mahathir bin Mohammad, by training a medical
to have sprouted up in temporal and spatial clus? doctor,Malaysia began to assert itselfas a country
ters,with Chicago and New York proving espe? on themove. The prime minister is said to have
cially hospitable to the form and its financing. "reinterpreted Islam as allowing the pursuit of
Throughout most of the 20th century, the sky? wealth and technical knowledge," and the gov?
scraper was considered a particularly American ernment's official objective came to be articulat?
genre, growing with the economy and optimism ed, in Bahasa Melayu, the native language of the
of cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles ethnic Bumiputra population, asWawasan 2020?
and Seattle. In the last decade of the century, or Vision 2020 inEnglish, the country's accepted
however, the frontier of the skyscraper has language of commerce and industry. The vision
moved across the Pacific Ocean to the Far East. has Malaysia transformed into a fully developed
Today, most of the tallest buildings in theworld industrialized nation by theyear 2020, with man?
are being proposed for locations such as Tokyo, ufacturing and construction becoming themain
Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. And driving forces of the country's economy. The
they are not only being proposed; they
are being Kuala Lumpur City Centre project is helping in a
built, with the tallest building in theworld re? a reality.
big way tomake theMalaysian vision
cently being topped out at 1,482 feet in Kuala Kuala Lumpur City Centre is a 100-acre devel?
Lumpur, Malaysia. opment on the site of a former racetrack, the Se
as among the
langor Turf Club, and is described
Henry Petroski is Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil largest real estate development projects in the
world. As the result of an international competi?
Engineering and chairman of the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Duke University. Address: Box tion held in 1990, a master plan?"an ideal city
90287, Durham, NC 27708-0287. within-a-city"?was defined by the U.S. firm of
Architecture and Engineering Hancock Tower, for example, was the result of a
The final design of skyscrapers, especially those collaboration between architectBruce Graham and
that are to be the tallest in theworld, does not structuralengineer Fazlur Khan of thefirmof Skid
evolve wholly froman architect's drawings. How a more, Owings and Merrill.) Pelli wished the "cos?
structurewill stand against the forces of nature? mic pillars" in Kuala Lumpur to be joined by a
whether theground motion in an earthquake zone, a
skybridge to form welcoming portal to Kuala
thewind at hundreds of feet above the ground or Lumpur City Centre and tohave as few structural
theheat of the sun beating down on the ground? columns as possible blocking the view outward
requires the insight and calculation of a structural from the office floors. Such featureswere easy to
engineer. (The exposed structureofChicago's John render on the drawing board but no small task to
Figure 2. Building design evolved to incorporate Islamic themes. (Illustration courtesy of Cesar Pelli & Associates.)
Innovative Concrete
Designing the superstructure of the building pre?
sented another set of challenges. Among the first
decisions facing structural consultant Thornton
and his associates at Ranhill Bersekutu inMalaysia
was the choice between steel and concrete. Al?
though the tallest skyscrapers are steel structures,
thatmaterial was not readily available inMalaysia,
where prohibitively high tariffson imported steel
make concrete the constructionmaterial of choice.
Furthermore, steel buildings tend tobe more flexi?
ble than concrete ones and sometimes have to be
fittedwith mechanical devices known as tuned
mass dampers to ameliorate the effects of vibra?
tions induced by thewind. Concrete structures,on
the other hand, although they tend tobe stifferand
have qualities that damp out quickly any vibra?
tions thatdo begin, often are bulkier-looking than
steel. Since the architectwished the Petronas Tow?
ers tobe slender-looking and have columns spaced
Figure 4. Digging machine prepared ground for founda? rather far apart, conventional concrete columns
tion barrettes. would have been too aesthetically broad and struc
maximize the comfort of occupants and the con? and towin the job,Harmon prepared an 800-page
venience of use. The concept of an intelligent bid tomeet theMalaysian expectation thatpropos?
building dates from the 1980s,when costs associ? als be both educational and business instruments.
ated with installing and retrofittingenvironmental Furthermore, as a condition of receiving such a
and communications systems were escalating. large contract, theAmerican specialistwas required
There also came tobe recognized clear advantages to set up shops inMalaysia to fabricate the compo?
in incorporating networking capabilities into a nents of the curtain wall and thereby introduce a
new building, rather than new industry to the country.
providing tenantswith
a structural shell that
they themselves have to The experience gained by local engineers and
wire. In the Petronas Twin Towers, each floor or contractors indesigning and building theworld's
pair of floorshas itsown local area network forair tallest buildings has prepared themwell to com?
conditioning and lighting, as well as a general plete the rest of Kuala Lumpur City Centre by
purpose controller forunspecified futureuse. the year 2020. By demanding local participation
in the project, theMalaysian government, led by
Technology Transfer its strong-willed prime minister, has ensured that
Although the record-breaking height of the the Petronas Twin Towers project will leave a
Petronas Twin Towers will be theirmost imme? legacy thatwill serve the local economy and so?
diately visible and talked-about feature, that no? ciety long after taller buildings are erected else?
toriety is likely to be short-lived, since taller where in theworld.
buildings already are being planned for Shang?
hai, China, and Melbourne, Australia. Among Acknowledgment
the more long-range benefits of the Petronas I am grateful to Charles H. Thornton for his
Twin Towers to theMalaysian economy is the February 1996 lecture at Duke University on the
considerable amount of technology transfer that Petronas Twin Towers, and to Leonard M. Joseph,
has accompanied their design and construction, vice president of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, for
with the direction and input of the prime minis? his comments on themanuscript for thiscolumn.
ter. For example, the development of the high
strength concrete used in the towers has in four Bibliography
years doubled the strength of concrete now pro? Gargan, E. A. 1996. A boom in malaysia reaches for the
duced inMalaysia. This means thatbuildings can sky. The New York Times, (February 2): Cl, C3.
be built in less time and for lessmoney. Reina, P., et al. 1996. Malaysia cracks height ceiling as it
Another by-product of the Twin Towers project catapults into future. Engineering News-Record,
has been the establishment of new local industries. (January 15): 36-54.
Robison, R. 1994. Twins. Civil Engineering,
The Twin Towers required about a million and a Malaysia's
(July): 63-65.
half square feetof stainless steel cladding and glass,
Robison, R. 1995. The twin towers of Kuala Lumpur. IEEE
in the form of 32,000 windows, to form a so-called
Spectrum, (October): 44-47.
curtainwall. This was the largest such job thatHar?
Thornton, C. H., et al. 1960. concrete for
High-strength
mon Contract, theMinnesota-based
participant in high-rise towers. American Society of Civil Engineers
the cladding contract consortium, had ever tackled, Structures Congress XIV, Chicago, Illinois, April 15-18.