Classroom lesson 路 The Petronas Twin Towers馃嚥馃嚲 Malaysia

The Petronas Twin Towers

Two silver towers joined by a sky-high bridge in the middle

The two silver Petronas Twin Towers rising into a blue sky in Kuala Lumpur

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Petronas Twin Towers stand right in the middle of Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur. They are two identical silver skyscrapers joined together halfway up by a special bridge in the sky. For six whole years - between 1998 and 2004 - they were the tallest buildings on the entire planet.

Tell me more

Each tower is 452 metres tall - higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris with a small house balanced on top. To reach the very top, a fast lift whizzes you up at around six metres a second. From up there, on a clear day, you can see right across the city and far into the green hills around it.

The most famous part is the Skybridge - a double-decker walkway joining the two towers at the 41st and 42nd floors, 170 metres above the street. The bridge isn't bolted to the towers. It is designed to slide a little as the towers sway in the wind, so nothing snaps. It's like a giant hug that can wiggle.

The towers' shape is taken from a special star pattern. If you look down from above, each tower is shaped like an eight-pointed star, with smaller circles bumping out between the points. The pattern comes from Malaysian art and is meant to feel welcoming.

Building the towers was a huge race. Two different teams - one from Japan and one from South Korea - each built one tower at the same time. They watched each other across the gap and tried to keep up. When they finally connected the Skybridge in the middle, both teams were exactly level, to the millimetre.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why does a very tall building need to be able to sway in the wind, instead of being totally stiff?
  2. 02Two teams built one tower each. What would be fun, and what would be tricky, about working that way?
  3. 03If you could put any one room at the top of a 452-metre tower, what would it be?
Try this

Classroom activity

In groups, build the tallest possible 'twin towers' from 30 spaghetti pieces and a few marshmallows. Each team builds one tower, then together you add a paper Skybridge joining the two. Whose towers stay up the longest?