Main Office
Dubai — Showroom
The Pinnacle Building, Sheikh Zayed Road, Office 607
Mon–Fri: 9:00 – 18:00
Cassette facades
A cassette is a sheet of aluminium folded back on all four edges into a shallow tray. The folds are what make it rigid, so the panel needs no visible fixing across its face: it is hung from clips on rails behind it and located by them, with a deliberate gap left between one tray and the next. Two things follow from that, and they are the reasons a cassette elevation is specified rather than a flat sheet. The hanger takes up what the structure got wrong, so a wall that is out of true still produces straight shadow lines. And because each tray is only held by its own clips, one damaged panel comes off on its own and a replacement goes back in its place.
- folded on four edges how the tray stiffens
- clips on rails how it is held
- one at a time how it comes off
Profile Options
Consult with a specialist
Profile finish and coating options
Powder coating in any shade of the RAL palette; the colour is confirmed against a physical sample at the survey.
Anodising builds an oxide layer on the profile itself, so the colour belongs to the metal rather than to a film on top of it and cannot peel.
Wood-grain and stone-effect finishes are transferred onto the powder coating. The profile keeps the strength of aluminium and never needs repainting.
Available colours (200+ RAL shades)
- White
- Anthracite
- Brown
- Black
- Grey-anthracite
- Grey
Anodised finishes
- Natural silver
- Champagne
- Light bronze
- Medium bronze
- Dark bronze
- Black anodised
Wood-grain and special effects
- Golden oak
- Walnut
- Dark oak
- Concrete
- Basalt
- Wenge
How a cassette elevation is set out
- Panel grid drawn against the openings Joints must land on something deliberate
- Rails levelled and lined off the structure The grid is only as true as the rails
- Panel proportion chosen for flatness A wide tray shows every ripple
- Joint width set for movement Metal in this sun does not stay still
- Trays folded and coated in Dubai Three to five weeks from the drawing
- Hung, adjusted and the run sighted along Shadow lines read straight or they do not
What a cassette elevation is made of
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Folded returns
Tray
The panel stiffens itself
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Nothing on the face
Fixing
Clips are hidden behind the fold
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Left open
Joint
A drawn line, not a sealed one
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Taken at the clip
Tolerance
Walls are rarely exactly as drawn
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Proportion and gauge
Flatness
What keeps a wide face from rippling
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Aluminium windows of any configuration
Made to size in our own factory in Dubai — in 3–5 weeks.
We will find convenient opening options:
Pricing
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What are we making
Shape and opening
Size
Width and height: 300–6000 mm. Not sure? Clear the fields — we’ll measure at the free survey.
Width under 300 mm — check that it is in millimetres.
Width over 6000 mm — we’ll confirm it at the survey.
Height under 300 mm — check that it is in millimetres.
Height over 6000 mm — we’ll confirm it at the survey.
Enter a whole number of units, 1 or more.
Glazing unit
Extras
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Do you need a coloured profile?
Do you need installation?
The honest downside
What a cassette facade does not solve
A cassette elevation is a finish, not insulation. The trays change how the building looks; what keeps heat off the wall is the cavity and the insulation behind them, so re-cladding in cassettes alone will not make the rooms any cooler.
The open joints have a cost too. They show whatever sits behind them, so the backing has to be dark and tidy, and blown sand and dust get into the cavity. At ground level a folded tray also dents where trolleys, cars and footballs meet it, and a replacement made years later can read newer than its sun-faded neighbours.
If the aim is a cooler building rather than a new face, start with the ventilated cavity and choose the skin afterwards. Cassettes are the right answer where the elevation must read crisply, hide its fixings and let one damaged panel come off on its own.
Consider instead
Ventilated facades
Frequently asked questions
It is unclipped and lifted off, and only that one. Because nothing crosses the face of a tray and nothing is sealed to its neighbours, the panels either side stay exactly where they are and the replacement is folded to the same dimensions and hung on the same clips. That is the practical argument for the system on a building that will be hit by a delivery lorry, a cradle or a chunk of somebody's air-conditioning unit at some point in its life.
Partly because it is honest and partly because it has to be. Aluminium in this climate grows and shrinks measurably between a summer afternoon and a January night, and trays butted tight against one another would push, bind and buckle at the ends of a run. The gap gives them room, and once it exists it is drawn as a shadow line rather than apologised for. Weather is not held out by that joint at all — it is dealt with behind the panels, which is why what sits in the gap between the trays and the wall matters more than the trays do.
Because light raking across an elevation shows any waviness in a wide metal face, and every folded tray has some. Three things control it: the proportion of the panel, the thickness of the sheet, and whether stiffeners are bonded across the back. It is a decision to take at the grid stage, since a panel that reads badly at one size can read perfectly well split into two. We will say plainly when a proposed size is going to show.
They answer different questions and are usually bought together. The cassette is the panel and the way it hangs. A ventilated facade is about what the space behind the panels is doing — insulation kept dry against the structure and an air path that carries heat away. You can hang cassettes with nothing clever behind them, and you can build a vented cavity behind a quite different skin. Where both are wanted they go up together, and the two decisions are still taken separately.
Related pages
Nearby pages and the rest of the catalogue.
- All-glass corners
- Aluminium railings
- Balcony glazing
- Balcony glazing upgrade
- Conservatories
- Curtain wall
- Floor-to-ceiling glazing
- Frameless balcony glazing
- Frameless glazing
- Garden rooms
- Glass balustrades
- Glass canopies
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Dubai — Showroom
The Pinnacle Building, Sheikh Zayed Road, Office 607
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