By: Rajesh Shah, MD of Euro Panel Products Limited
The way buildings are designed and constructed today looks very different from how they looked two decades ago. The change is not just aesthetic. The materials that go into a building now carry engineering responsibilities that earlier generations of facade materials were never designed to handle, and tracing how that happened means looking at the specific problems the industry was pushed to solve.
From Cladding to Structural Variable
One of the most significant shifts in facade specification has been driven by a single variable: weight. Natural stone and masonry cladding impose substantial structural dead load on a building. On a 60-floor tower with tens of thousands of square metres of facade, that load has to be built into every structural calculation from the foundation upward.
Aluminium composite panels changed that equation. At a fraction of the dead load that natural stone or masonry cladding imposes, they fundamentally alter what the structural calculation for a high-rise facade looks like. This is not a minor adjustment. It affects substructure design, anchor specifications, and how the facade integrates with the structural frame of the building. The material moved from being a finishing decision to a structural design variable, and that opened a specification conversation between facade manufacturers and structural engineers that had not previously existed at this scale.
This shift brought with it the wider adoption of mild steel substructure systems. These systems consist of steel brackets and aluminium rails that are fixed directly to the deadwall. The ACP panels are then mounted onto this secondary framework. The substructure carries the facade load, and helps creates a clean, engineered interface between the building’s skeleton and its outer skin.
What Supertall Buildings Ask of a Facade Panel
A building that rises 60, 70, or 80 floors in a coastal location faces significant wind pressure on its facade. To handle this safely, tall buildings are not built to stand completely rigid. They are engineered to sway slightly under wind load and return to position, which is safer than absorbing the full force of the wind through the structure. The facade material has to handle that movement without cracking, loosening, or letting water in. If the panel cannot accommodate that movement it creates a structural failure.
The Lodha World Towers in Worli Mumbai, illustrate the scale of this requirement. Buildings of over 70 storeys in that location face some of the most demanding combinations of height, lateral wind exposure, and salt-laden coastal atmosphere in the country. At that height and in that environment, the facade specification is determined by what the panel must withstand over its service life, not by how it looks under lateral load and corrosive coastal exposure over a 30 to 40-year service life, which is why panels used in these conditions are validated through accelerated weathering tests according to AAMA 2605 where panels are tested for over 4,000 hours before they are installed.
How the New Methodology Changed the Build Timeline
The new build methodology- an aluminium substructure secured through mild steel brackets carrying lightweight ACP panels, has transformed how quickly a high-rise can be constructed. ACP panels attach directly to the framework and require no curing time, no cement mix, and no heavy scaffolding to install. Columns are constructed and slabs are inserted as the floors rise. After the construction of the sub structure, the outer skin of each floor is closed quickly as the structure rises. Combined with ready-mix concrete that achieves structural strength in under two hours, the construction sequence can advance from one floor to the next without the waiting periods that traditional methods required. The result is a floor-by-floor pace that was not achievable before these two elements worked together.
At the scale of a project like the Lodha world Towers in Worli, that pace becomes significant. Over seventy floors is a demanding build under any methodology. The fact that projects of this complexity and height can be delivered through this approach is what has established them as icons of the new build methodology.
Formability and the Geometry It Unlocked
Aluminium composite panels and even some solid panels like Eurodual can be formed into curves, cones, compound angles, and wraparound profiles without compromising the finish quality or structural consistency across the profile change.
Air traffic control towers created some of the most demanding tests for this capability. Their 360-degree enclosure requirements, and compound curvature profiles need a material that is highly formable, durable and consistent. Metal composite panels answered that specification, and have since become the standard choice across airports, metro stations, and railway infrastructure in India.
In transit environments, two additional performance characteristics come into play. The lightweight nature of these panels reduces the structural load on station canopies and platforms designed for high daily throughput. Their acoustic properties help manage the noise levels that high footfall and mechanical systems generate in enclosed transit spaces. Both make metal composite panels the practical choice for infrastructure projects where performance requirements go well beyond appearance. Eurocomb- Aluminium Honeycomb Panels are used in the construction of bullet train stations.These absorb vibration and sound they are light weight and possess high shear strength they are also Fire Retardant.
Fire Performance and the Next Specification Standard
Fire performance has become one of the defining specification criteria of the current era. The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017, which claimed 72 lives, brought the fire behaviour of facade cladding materials under intense global scrutiny. The regulatory response was significant. EN 13501-1 became the standard framework across markets, classifying materials on combustibility, toxic smoke production, and flaming droplet behaviour, and giving architects and specifiers a precise technical basis for evaluating facade materials against fire performance requirements. In response, the industry developed a new generation of mineral-filled fire-retardant cores and fully non-combustible core panels, expanding the range of performance options available for projects where building codes or client requirements demand higher fire classification. The distinction between standard, fire-retardant, and non-combustible core panels is now built into building codes and procurement specifications across the world, giving specifiers a clear framework for matching the right panel to the right application.
The second pressure shaping the current phase of product development is lifecycle performance. PVDF-coated factory finishes on aluminium composite panels carry a documented 10 to 20 year durability profile under normal environmental exposure. The recyclability of aluminium means that end-of-life performance is also entering the specification conversation from the earliest stages of design. Buildings are increasingly being evaluated on their full lifecycle, from construction cost through maintenance to LEED certification targets, and the material choices made at the specification stage have a direct bearing on all three. The specification requirements defining current projects reflect two decades of engineering problems that our industry has answered.