CREE Buildings

About CREE Buildings

CREE Buildings, formally CREE GmbH, is an Austrian construction technology company that describes itself as an international construction collective for regenerative building solutions. It is headquartered in Dornbirn in the Vorarlberg region, at Rhomberg's Fabrik on Färbergasse.

The company does not build in the conventional sense. It has developed the CREE System, a proven and reproducible structural system for multi-storey timber-hybrid buildings, and licenses that system to a global network of developers and construction companies who deliver the projects themselves. CREE provides the system, the methodology and the network; local partners provide the supply chain and the labour.

History

The origins lie in 2009, when Rhomberg Bau, working with Wiehag, Architekten Hermann Kaufmann and Arup, began the LifeCycle Tower project to develop a flexible, modular, ready-to-build timber-hybrid system for prefabricated energy-efficient buildings of up to twenty floors and one hundred metres in height.

CREE itself was founded in 2010 as the brainchild of Hubert Rhomberg, who remains founder and chief executive, and began operating in 2011. In 2012 LCT ONE opened in Dornbirn as the world's first LifeCycle Tower and remains an international reference building. The Illwerke Zentrum Montafon followed in 2013, the Wagner Central Offices in Nüziders in 2014, and the BTV office building in Memmingen in 2015, the first CREE building in Germany.

From 2016 the company shifted from being a construction firm to a technology and network provider, establishing global distribution points and partnering with construction companies market by market: Singapore in 2016, Denmark in 2017, Luxembourg in 2018, and Belgium, Portugal and Japan in 2019. Eunoia Junior College in Singapore, completed in 2019, was the first CREE building in Asia and houses the country's first high-rise junior college. By 2022 the network spanned 27 countries on three continents and had completed around 200,000 square metres of building space.

The CREE System

The system combines timber, concrete and steel rather than building entirely in wood. CREE argues that this smart material mix delivers better performance in vibration, sound insulation, fire resistance and weather protection than all-timber construction, while retaining the carbon benefits of timber. The system carries a 120-minute fire rating with standardised connection detailing.

A second principle is local supply chains. Rather than shipping components from a central factory, CREE enables partners to manufacture regionally, which cuts embodied carbon and transport cost, keeps value in local markets and removes dependence on centralised logistics.

Ownership and Network

CREE has three shareholders, each an established construction group: Rhomberg Bau, the Austrian parent with more than 130 years in construction; the Zech Group of Germany, which joined in 2018 and drove projects including EDGE Suedkreuz in Berlin and the Siemens Campus in Erlangen; and Grupo Casais of Portugal, a licence partner since 2020 that became the third shareholder in 2023.

Beyond the shareholders, the network includes engineering and construction partners such as Buro Happold, ASPECT Structural Engineers, Brüninghoff, CDCL, EFFEKT, Peikko, Wood Shapers, Xylotek and Syner. Knowledge is shared through the CREE Platform, a digital environment launched in the 2020 to 2022 period for partners to exchange technical resources and lessons learned.

Projects and Certifications

Completed buildings span offices, education, hospitality and residential use, including LCT ONE and the Illwerke Zentrum Montafon in Austria, EDGE Suedkreuz Berlin and the Siemens Campus Erlangen in Germany, Eunoia Junior College in Singapore, the B&B Hotel in Guimarães and Residência Universitária Norte in Portugal, WoodHub, Handwerkerhaus, ORF Funkhaus BT-E, Allégra and 1925 Victoria Park in Toronto.

CREE projects have achieved DGNB Platinum and DGNB Diamond, LEED Gold, WELL Platinum and Certified Passive House status, alongside recognition from the Austrian Sustainable Building Council, the SOLID Bautechpreis 2021 and the Austrian Export Prize in 2022.

Why CREE Matters to the AEC Industry

CREE is one of the clearest working models for industrialised timber construction. It demonstrates that a structural system can be developed once and deployed internationally through licensing rather than expansion, that hybridising timber with concrete and steel resolves the acoustic, vibration and fire objections that limit pure mass timber at height, and that regional manufacturing can make prefabrication viable without long supply chains. For developers and design teams weighing mass timber against conventional structure, CREE's fifteen-year project record offers unusually well-documented precedent.