Vital Statistics:
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Completion Date: 1998
Cost: $1.6 billion
Height: 1,483 feet
Stories: 88
Materials: Concrete, Steel
Facing Materials: Aluminum, Stainless Steel
Engineer(s): Thornton-Tomasetti and Ranhill Bersekutu
Until 1998, the world's tallest skyscraper had always been in the United States. But that year, Malaysia's Petronas Towers laid claim to this distinction.
Squeaking past the Chicago Sears Tower by 33 feet, the spires atop the Petronas Towers peak at an impressive 1,483 feet. Yet there's a controversy. The highest occupied floor in the Sears Tower is actually 200 feet higher than the top floor of the Petronas Towers, and its antennae stretch higher still.
So why are the Petronas Towers considered the world's tallest buildings? According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, spires count, but antennae don't. Spires do not contain floors, but they are counted in the world's tallest building race for one architectural reason: they're nice to look at.
- The Petronas Towers were featured in the blockbuster movie Entrapment, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
- It took 36,910 tons of steel to build the Petronas Towers. That's heavier than 3,000 elephants!
- It takes 90 seconds to travel from the basement parking lot to the top of each tower.
Together, the towers have 32,000 windows. It takes window washers an entire month to wash each tower just once!