Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Throwing the gauntlet down to Hong Kong as a financial capital.Height: 452 meters

Cost to build: US$1.6 billion

Completion date: June 1996

Fast fact: National poet laureate A. Samad Said was commissioned to write a poem for the towers, which can be read here: www.petronastwintowers.com.my"These towers changed the skyline of Kuala Lumpur, and jumped the existing scale there dramatically. Petronas was also an attempt to relate a tall building to a country’s culture and history, and to make a statement about its power and desire to replace Hong Kong as a financial capital.” -- A. Eugene Kohn.

Employing the repetitive geometric principle of Muslim architecture and Islamic arabesques, architect César Pelli wanted the Petronas Twin Towers to exude Malaysian culture and heritage; and he succeeded.

Although nothing in Kuala Lumpur is nearly as colossal, the world’s tallest twin towers somehow feel at home amid the capital’s otherwise unassuming cityscape.

Completed in 1996, the sky bridge that connects the two towers symbolizes “a gateway to the future” and Malaysia’s sky-high ambition entering the millennium. Since completion, this 451-meter skyscraper has become Malaysia’s unmistakable icon.

Overall structure

In 1996, after the spires had been attached to the buildings (and each had thus reached its full height), the Petronas Twin Towers were declared the world’s tallest buildings, eclipsing the former record holder, the 110-story Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago. The roof of the Sears Tower was actually more than 200 feet (60 metres) higher than those of the Twin Towers, but the spires on the towers’ pinnacles were regarded as integral parts of the overall architectural structure (see Researcher’s Note: Heights of buildings). The Twin Towers, in turn, lost their preeminent status in 2003 after a spire was put in place atop the Taipei 101 (Taipei Financial Center) building, in Taipei, Taiwan, and that structure reached a height of 1,667 feet (508 metres).