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ALERT Breakout EDU:
A Brief Pause to Take Note

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Delta

 
       Breakout EDU is an educational tool of powerful potential, but it would not be responsible to rush through the puzzles and not take note of the rich architectural connections you and your teammates could make today.

       Consider for a moment Petronas Towers, one of the structures you encountered on your GeoGuessr world tour.
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The Petronas Towers
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Height: 1,483 ft (452 meters)

Owners: Kuala Lumpur City Centre Holdings Sendirian Berhad

Architects: Cesar Pelli & Associates

Engineers: Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers

Contractors: Mayjus and SKJ Joint Ventures

Official Opening: August 28, 1999



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On April 15, 1996, the Council on Tall Buildings named the Petronas Towers the tallest in the world, passing the torch to a new continent. Although the project's developers, a consortium of private investors in association with the Malaysian government and Petronas, the national oil company, had not originally set out to surpass Chicago's Sears Tower, they did aspire to construct a monument announcing Kuala Lumpur's prominence as a commercial and cultural capital. In the design of American architect Cesar Pelli they found a winning scheme--twin towers of elegant proportions with a slenderness ratio (height to width) of 9.4--that would capture not only the title but the public imagination.

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Pelli's design answered the developer's call to express the 'culture and heritage of Malaysia' by evoking Islamic arabesques and employing repetitive geometries characteristic of Muslim architecture. In plan, an 8-point star formed by intersecting squares is an obvious reference to Islamic design; curved and pointed bays create a scalloped facade that suggests temple towers. The identical towers are linked by a bridge at the 41st floor, creating a dramatic gateway to the city.
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The structure is high-strength concrete, a material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction. Supported by 75-by-75-foot concrete cores and an outer ring of widely-spaced super columns, the towers showcase a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile and provides from 14,000 to 22,000 square feet of column-free office space per floor.

Other features include a curtain wall of glass and stainless steel sun shades to diffuse the intense equatorial light; a double-decker elevator system with a sky lobby transfer point on the 41st floor to accommodate the thousands of people who use the complex daily; and a mixed-use base featuring a concert hall and shopping center enveloped by nearly seventy acres of public parks and plazas.

In both engineering and design, the Petronas Towers succeed at acknowledging Malaysia's past and future, embracing the country's heritage while proclaiming its modernization. The end result, says Pelli, is a monument that is not specifically Malaysian, but will forever be identified with Kuala Lumpur.

Willis, Carol. “Petronas Towers.” Petronas Towers, The Skyscraper Museum, 2017, 

http://www.skyscraper.org/TALLEST_TOWERS/t_petronas.htm.


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Now that you have taken some time to review the text, diagrams, and charts, you are welcome to resume your Breakout challenge. Best wishes for your observational powers in discovering your 3-digit code for the final lockbox!
Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking: Our  Mission

​The Richland School District Two ALERT program for academically gifted students, in association with families, the district and global community, affords each learner unique challenges to inspire the pursuit of highest academic standards by providing rigorous, differentiated curricula that cultivates excellence in leadership and life-long learning.
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Website Updated:
28 January 2019
Webpage maintained by the Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking (ALERT)  and Scholarly Pursuits Always Reveal Knowledge (SPARK) classes of Richland School District Two, Columbia, South Carolina.
Please direct queries to Mr. Kevin Durden.