Stick vs Unitised Curtain Wall: Which to Choose for Your Building

Two Ways to Build the Same Skin

A glazed curtain wall can be built in two fundamentally different ways, and confusing them is one of the more expensive mistakes a project team can make. A stick-built wall is assembled piece by piece on the building. A unitised wall arrives as storey-height panels, factory-glazed and craned into place. They produce a similar-looking façade and behave completely differently on programme, on cost and on site logistics. Facade Ghana has installed both across Ghana since 1982, and the right answer is almost never a matter of taste.

How Each One Is Actually Built

Stick-built

Aluminium mullions and transoms are fixed to the structure first, then glass and infill panels are glazed in from outside — usually off scaffold or a cradle. It is the lower-priced way into a curtain wall and the most flexible system for irregular elevations, but it is slower and needs external access for the full height of the building.

Unitised

Storey-height panels are fabricated and glazed in a factory, delivered complete, and hung on the building so each panel interlocks with the next. Site work is fast, needs little external scaffold, and factory glazing gives more consistent quality — which is why unitised dominates on high-rise towers. The trade-off is higher up-front cost and a fabrication lead time before anything reaches site.

The Three Questions That Decide It

The choice falls out of the building, not out of a preference for one product.

How tall is it?

Low-to-mid-rise gives you the freedom of stick. A tall tower pushes you toward unitised, where little external access and factory-controlled glazing matter most. Above roughly eight to ten storeys, the access cost of stick starts to erase its price advantage.

How fast is the programme?

A tight, fast programme rewards unitised panels that arrive complete and crane in floor by floor. A relaxed programme can absorb the slower, scaffold-bound pace of stick.

What is the site access like?

A congested CBD plot with no room for scaffold or a tower crane changes the calculation entirely. Unitised needs a crane but little external access; stick needs sustained external access but lighter lifting.

The Honest Cost Picture

Stick is lower-priced to start, which is why it suits low-to-mid-rise budgets. Unitised carries a higher up-front rate and a fabrication lead time, but on a tall, fast tower it often wins on total cost once scaffold, access and programme time are counted. Neither is “the budget option” in the abstract — they are different value points for different buildings. The francophone West Africa benchmark of roughly 280,000–311,000 F CFA per square metre (quoted as a regional comparison) and the global US$180–500+ per m² range both span this gap. The firm number comes on survey — see the Curtain Wall Cost Guide.

Get the Choice Confirmed Against Your Building

We confirm stick or unitised on survey, against the building’s real height, programme and access — not by selling one system to every project. Read the façade systems compared overview for the full picture, then call +233 27 000 0844 to book a survey.