Petronas Towers at KLCC

Architect: Cesar Pelli and Adamson Associates

Ward was the secondary principal in Audiovisual and Acoustics design for these twin 88 story towers in the Malaysian Capital City, designed by Cesar Pelli, and liaison to NY Head Office. Ward’s scope Included AV Needs Assessment interviews and report’s and budgets for Petronas’s Head Office AV requirements.

Mr. Sellars also supervised acoustical selection and mock-up testing of air-handling equipment for both towers. These were very large 40,000 CFM compartment units, 2 per floor. We conducted large AHU mock-up tests with 6 proponents units, in a full size mock up of one half of the office floor, constructed near the tower construction site. SM&W’s acoustics practice is an aero-acoustic one, where we almost never use sound traps (silencers) to control air-borne noise to sensitive areas. Our Acoustics spec was NC-40 in the open-plan office floors, without any silencers. We carefully designed the air-flow and unit arrangements, indicating either plug fans or mixed flow fans, so as to meet the low noise environment. The compartment units are located just 4m away from occupied offices. We were able to select a winning manufacturers product, that gave us exactly the static pressure, volume and noise performance we were looking for - without silencers. The winning bidder used two 20,000 CFM mixed flow fans, controlled with variable speed drives. At the time (1994), variable speed drives were expensive and there were few suppliers, but we advised the client that variable speed drives gave a lot of control benefits that could not be duplicated. Nowadays, variable speed drives are ubiquitous, but that was not the case in 1994 - everyone was using mechanical inlet vanes on centrifugal fans.

The amount of cooling needed for the towers and podium, in this equatorial tropical climate, was a mind blowing 60,000 RT, to be produced at 3 deg C. The reasons for the low temperature was that the central cooling and generator plant was located 600m away from the towers, on the other side of a park. Petronas is a major natural gas developer and supplier, so initially they wanted to use gas-fired absorption chillers to demonstrate the versality of their prime product. However, the absorption chillers just couldn’t get the water temperature low enough. In the end, we used 20 units of 3,000 RT each of centrifugal chillers. We did manage to use natural gas for a few of the gas-turbine powered electrical generators.

Mr. Sellars supported the lead Telecommunications design team from New York. Ward at the time was running the Hong Kong office of SM&W, and was responsible for projects throughout SE Asia, including in Malaysia. This project started in the New York office of SM&W, with eventually 3 NYC staff deployed to KL. Ward travelled to the project site frequently from Hong Kong.

SM&W  provided complete acoustical, audiovisual, and telecommunications consulting services for one of the most breathtaking commercial building projects in the world.  The main architectural features of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre project are twin 88 storey office towers connected at the 45th floor by a skybridge.

Phase I construction consists of 3.8 million square feet of office and retail space including a theatre, recording studios, health facilities, conference Centre, and multi-use training Centre.  When additional office towers, a hotel, and retail areas were included, the gross area exceeds 10 million square feet.