Three quick checks for early design: what a facade will weigh and what it takes to lift it, what it costs in embodied carbon, and what the fixings and rails have to carry. Every default is editable and every source is stated.
Panel weight and crane class
Dead load per square metre by cladding type, total facade weight, per-panel weight and an indicative lifting method.
Where the defaults come from
ShapeShell-RT, RC and RG weights are the ranges published on shapeshift.tech material pages. Precast is 2,400 kg/m³ at the stated thickness. Fibre cement, aluminium composite panel and terracotta are typical manufacturer figures for the stated thickness. All are midpoints of a range; edit the field to match a specific product.
0 tonnes
- Panel area
- Panels for the facade
- Weight per panel
- Indicative lifting method
Bars show the total facade weight for the same area in each material. Lifting method is a rule of thumb for early planning only: two-person handling up to about 50 kg per panel, vacuum lifter or spider crane to about 500 kg, mobile crane to about 2,000 kg, tower crane above that. Site access, reach and safe work method statements decide the real answer.
Embodied carbon by cladding type
Cradle-to-gate embodied carbon of the panel material for the facade area entered above, using editable emission factors per kilogram.
Emission factors, kg CO₂e per kg (editable)
| Material | kg/m² | Factor |
|---|
How the number is built
Embodied carbon per m² = weight in service (kg/m²) × emission factor (kg CO₂e per kg). Total = per m² × facade area. Scope is the panel material only: no substructure, fixings, transport, installation, maintenance or end of life. Those stages are included in a full EPD to EN 15804 and can shift the ranking, particularly transport for heavy panels and replacement cycles for short-lived ones.
0 t CO₂e
Mass and emission factor pull in opposite directions. A polymer composite carries a high factor per kilogram on very little mass; precast carries a low factor on a great deal of mass. With the default factors a single-skin FRP panel lands below precast and a thick monocoque above it, and GRC and GRG sit below all three. The ranking is sensitive to the factors, which is the argument for a verified EPD rather than a screening table.
Preliminary substructure load
Unfactored dead and wind loads per fixing and per metre of rail for a chosen fixing grid, to size a first-pass bracket and rail scheme.
0 kN resultant per fixing
- Tributary area per fixing
- Dead load per fixing
- Wind load per fixing (pressure or suction)
- Dead load per metre of rail
- Wind load per metre of rail
Dead load per fixing = kg/m² × tributary area × 9.81 / 1000. Wind load per fixing = kPa × tributary area. Resultant is the vector sum. Rail line loads use the panel height between rails as the tributary height.
Need the real numbers for a project? ShapeShift produces panel schedules, weights, fixing loads and pricing from your model. Send us the geometry or read the Fibre Reinforced Facade Encyclopedia for the terms used here.