Posts Tagged ‘petronas tower design’

The design models that inspired the creation of the PETRONAS Towers were taken from the many historical architecture styles rooted in Malaysian culture. Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic thoughts dominated the history of Malaysia with an additional European influence. The PETRONAS Towers reflect portions of all these models, and the towers that exist today owe a great deal of their power to the judicious combination of cultural influences in their design.

The earliest influences arrived from old Hindu and Buddhist temples. Although Hinduism flowered earlier, the growth of these two religions are both intertwined in the early history of Malaysia, and their architectures provide ample examples of the styles consulted in the designing of the PETRONAS Towers.

The Hindu Prambanan temple complex on the island of Java is typical of the tall and pointed forms of Hindu temple architecture. The Shiva Temple, built on the site around 850, bears a certain resemblance to the PETRONAS Towers, as both reach high into the sky in a series of staggered steps capped by decorative spires. The spires that appear on the Hindu temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia were built in the twelfth century and are quite similar to the slightly rounded pinnacles on top of the PETRONAS Towers. The flavor of the ancient Hindu Dravidian architecture style is also present in the PETRONAS Towers as Dravidian towers often consisted of progressively smaller stories of pavilions placed one atop another.

Even the squat Great Stupa built by Ashoka the Great in 250 BC at Sanchi, India bears a family resemblance to the PETRONAS Towers due to the rising layers of concentric rings. The stupa building form was common in Buddhist religious architecture and later evolved in the Pagoda form that came to dominate Asian architecture. The PETRONAS Towers in some ways resemble tall stylized pagodas.

The classic motifs of Islamic architecture like orderly repetition, radiating structures and rhythmic patterns, and organized columns and alternating niches have also been a significant feature in the towers. Examples of these motifs abound in the PETRONAS Towers, as the basic superstructure of the towers includes a series of columns nestled in the niches of the eight pointed star that forms the base of each tower. The orderly repetition of the concentric glass and steel rings that cover the exterior of the PETRONAS Towers is also in keeping with Islamic architectural traditions. Islamic architecture grew largely from Persian styles and may be considered a further evolution of Persian architecture. The tapered pillars of Persian-style mosques superseded Hindu architecture in most of southern Asia 1,000 years ago. Islamic mosques are also famous for their minarets, which are often described as a gate between heaven and earth, a description that seems quite appropriate when applied to the PETRONAS Towers. The PETRONAS Towers feature a bit of Islamic arabesque in their geometric representation of living creatures as the towers in some ways resemble a pair of giant plant forms rising from the ground. Comparing the Sultan Ahmed Mosque built by the Ottoman Ahmed I in 1616 in Istanbul with the PETRONAS Towers built in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, we can see there are many familiar similarities.

The stylistic contributors to the design for the towers were many, and even echoes of the Eiffel tower can be noted. But the design is not merely a catch-all of all previous architectural styles of the world. The angularity of western architecture was rejected, but the western habit of innovation was heartily embraced. The flat planar focus of European architecture was not used, but the European habit of multiculturalism was adopted enthusiastically.

The design of the PETRONAS Towers can be seen as both a two-way window and a two-way mirror, looking inside and out of Malaysia at the same time, focusing modern economics and innovative technology from around the globe into Malaysia while reflecting Malaysia’s own culture back out into the world.