Engineering Petronas Towers and Kuala Lumpur City Centre

A landmark of Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas Towers, were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 and remain the tallest twin towers in the world.

Location

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Client

KLCC Property Holdings Berhad

Project Status

Completed in 1998

Architect

Pelli Clarke Pelli

Tallest Twin Towers in the World

The Petronas Towers formed the first phase of the Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC) project to create an entertainment, commercial and business focal point and a popular tourist destination at the heart of the city.

Rising above a retail podium, which contains a performing arts centre, car park and an art & science museum, the towers are home to the headquarters of Petroliam Nasional Berhad, Malaysia’s National Oil Company.

Innovative Design Solutions to Reduce Energy Costs

We provided the entire building services design for the Petronas Towers and podium, working closely with the architects to ensure perfect integration of the technical services into the architecture. Innovative design solutions included energy recovery wheels in the retail podium providing an effective means of reducing energy cost and cooling loads while allowing for the scaling down of HVAC equipment. Cool exhaust air from the retail area is transferred to the four-level subterranean car park to help create a comfortable environment.

Our continuing involvement in the development of KLCC has included the design of the initial 30,000-ton on-site central plant, which has expanded to 60,000 tons to meet the cooling requirements of the entire district. The current phase includes 12 MW of cogeneration capacity using gas turbines to generate electric power, recovery boilers to efficiently produce high pressure steam and electric and steam-driven chillers for site cooling requirements. The chillers use environmentally acceptable refrigerants to minimize potential hazards.

WSP has also provided vertical transportation engineering design solutions for other buildings in the development. The most recent project is a multi-purpose development comprising a 55 floor hotel tower and a 77 floor office tower over a 6 floor retail and entertainment podium at KLCC Lot 185. We provided full design duties on the project which includes the installation of 55 elevators and 42 Escalators; 28 of the elevators will be Double Deck.