Petronas Towers in the context of "Bloomberg Television"

The original World Trade Center (WTC) was a complex of seven buildings in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Built primarily between 1966 and 1975, it was dedicated on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed on September 11, 2001. The complex included the 110-story-tall Twin Towers, at the time of their completion the tallest buildings in the world, with the original 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) at 1,368 feet (417 m), and 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower) at 1,362 feet (415.1 m); they were also the tallest twin skyscrapers in the world until 1996, when the Petronas Towers opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The other buildings in the complex were the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. The complex contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m) of office space and, prior to its completion, was projected to accommodate an estimated 130,000 people.

The core complex cost about $400 million (equivalent to $2.37 billion in 2024). David Rockefeller suggested the construction of a large office building complex to help stimulate urban renewal in Lower Manhattan, and his brother Nelson, then New York's 49th governor, signed the legislation to build it. The buildings at the complex were designed by Minoru Yamasaki. In 1998, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to privatize it by leasing the buildings to a private company to manage. It awarded the lease to Silverstein Properties in July 2001. During its existence, the World Trade Center symbolized globalization and the economic power and prosperity of the United States. Although its design was initially criticized by New Yorkers and architectural critics, the Twin Towers became an icon of New York City. It had a major role in popular culture, and according to one estimate was depicted in 472 films. The Twin Towers were also used in Philippe Petit's tightrope-walking performance on August 7, 1974. Following the September 11 attacks, mentions of the complex in various media were altered or deleted, and several dozen "memorial films" were created.

César Pelli (October 12, 1926 – July 19, 2019) was an Argentine-American architect who designed some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. Three of his most notable buildings are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the World Financial Center in New York City, and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. The American Institute of Architects named him one of the ten most influential living American architects in 1991 and awarded him the AIA Gold Medal in 1995. In 2008, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat presented him with The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Gerald Ratner Athletics Center (colloquially, the Rat) is a $51 million athletics facility within the University of Chicago campus in the Hyde Park community area on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. The building was named after University of Chicago alumnus, Gerald Ratner. The architect of this suspension structure that is supported by masts, cables and counterweights was César Pelli, who is best known as the architect of the Petronas Towers.

The Ratner Athletics Center was approved for use in September 2003. The facility includes, among other things: a competition gymnasium, a multilevel fitness facility, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a multipurpose dance studio, meeting room space, and athletic department offices. It serves as home to several of the university's athletic teams and has hosted numerous National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III regional and University Athletic Association conference championship events.

A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclosed or covered footbridges that protect pedestrians from the weather. Open-top modern skyways in mountains now often have glass bottoms. Sometimes enclosed urban skywalks are made almost totally from glass, including ceilings, walls and floors. Also, some urban skyways function strictly as linear parks designed for walking.

In North America skyways are usually owned by businesses, and are therefore not public spaces as compared with sidewalks. However, in Asia, such as Bangkok's and Hong Kong's skywalks, they are built and owned separately by the city government, connecting between privately run rail stations or other transport with their own footbridges, and run many kilometers. Skyways usually connect on the first few floors above the ground-level floor, though they are sometimes much higher, as in the Petronas Towers. The space in the buildings connected by skyways is often devoted to retail business, so areas around the skyway may operate as a shopping mall. Non-commercial areas with closely associated buildings, such as university campuses, can often have skyways and/or tunnels connecting buildings.

Malaysia is home to one of the largest congregations of skyscrapers in the world. The country ranks fourth in the global list compiled by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), with 518 recorded structures built exceeding the height of 150 metres (492 ft). The country's first skyscraper was built in Kuala Lumpur in 1978, and since then the city has one of the tallest skylines in the world. Besides Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding metropolitan area, most Malaysian skyscrapers are built either in George Town or Johor Bahru. Since 2023, Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur has been the tallest skyscraper in Malaysia. Built with an architectural height of 678.9 metres (2,227 ft), it contains the tallest observatory installed in a spire and is currently the world's second tallest building or man-made structure.

Malaysia's history with skyscrapers originated from construction booms in Kuala Lumpur between the 1970s and 1980s, where architectural height records were constantly broken and surpassed. In 1971, the 28-storey Sime Bank Building (currently Takaful Building) was the first building to exceed 100 metres (328 ft). In 1978, the Bank Muamalat Building became the first skyscraper in the country under the definitions of the CTBUH. In 1985, the 65-storey Komtar in George Town became the first skyscraper to exceed 200 metres (656 ft) in height. The Petronas Towers, a pair of 88-storey supertall skyscrapers located in the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, were the tallest skyscrapers in the world from 1998 to 2004, and remains the tallest twin skyscrapers in the world as of 2023.