Petronas Twin Tower ( KLCC )

The Petronas Twin Tower or better known as the KLCC among the locals is definately one of the most popular land mark in Kuala Lumpur.



Why Malaysia wanted to build such a magnificent building? This idea was first mooted by the previous Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad. Tun Dr Mahathir felt that a lot of foreigners still do not know much or understand about Malaysia. So, he was hoping that by building this magnificent building, it will enhance the popularity of this country Malaysia.



Tun Dr Mahathir also felt that previous logo for Malaysia which is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building is not suitable. This is because the building has foreign elements to it. So, he wanted to have a unique building which can portray Malaysia is a modern Islamic country.


As such, in the year 1990, Tun Dr Mahathir organised a competition to choose who can design the most unique building for Malaysia.

In this competition, the world famous Cesar Pelli & Associates was chosen and designed this unique building.

At the initial stage of the planning and building, it was not planned that this building is to be the tallest in the world.

In fact, construction was already well underway when one afternoon in 1994, in a meeting over tea, a question was casually put to Pelli by Dr Mahathir.

At the meeting, suddenly out of jovial mood the Prime Minister asked how many more metres would it take for the Petronas Twin Towers to get the "tallest building in the world" tag.

It was back to the drawing boards, and after some frantic mathematical recalculation, it was deemed doable.

Not by increasing the number of floors, however, but by raising the height of the pinnacles which were originally designed to be much flatter.

To test the viability, another wind tunnel study was carried out to ensure the building could withstand the added height and accompanying stress.


A bidding of was organised to choose who will be responsible to build the building. Finally, the Korean Samsung Engineering & Construction and Kukdong Engineering & Construction and the Japanese Hazama Corporation were chosen to build the building.

Both the construction companies are in charge of building each of the tower.

The Korean construction company Kukdong Engineering & Construction was chosen to build the skybridge.

The skybridge is located on the 41st and 42nd floor of the building.

The main purpose of the skybridge is a device during emergency where the tenants can use it to cross over during the evacuation purposes.

The skybridge is also open to the tourists on the 41st floor. However, only 1300 free tickets are available on first come first serve basis.

Visitors are only allowed for the 41st floor as the 42nd floor is only for the tenants of the building.

Most tourists are curious that how come this tallest building in the world can be built by using so many glass panels. This is because Malaysia is a very safe country. We do not have any natural disaster like earthquake, volcano, huricane in Malaysia. So, thats the reason why glass panels can be used.

During the construction process, a world record was broken as the cement was poured without stopping for 58 hours.

The Korean successfully completed its building in 1996 and the Japanese in the year 1997.

This was followed by Tun Dr Mahathir opened ceremony of this building in the year 1999 and he declared that this building is the world tallest building in the 20th century.

The twin tower is 451.9m height and it has 88 storeys.

Both towers are of equal height and dimension as this is one of the Islamic design element whereby it has to be simetry.

The twin tower consists of:

1) Tower One is mainly occupied by Petronas and its subsidiaries.
2) A number of companies have offices in Tower Two, including Accenture, Al Jazeera English, Carigali Hess Bloomberg, Boeing, IBM, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, McKinsey & Co, TCS, Krawler Networks, Microsoft, and Reuters.
3) KLCC Park :Spanning 17 acres 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.
4) Suria KLCC is one of the largest shopping malls in Malaysia.
5) The Philharmonic Concert.

Within the vicinity of KLCC:

1) The Maxis building
2) The Esso building
3) The Aquaria
4) The Mandarin Oriental hotel
5) The Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.