Brazil's Aurora 275 Is a 22-Metre Timber Tower Built in Four Weeks
A 22-metre tower made mostly of wood has been built in the Suzano area of São Paulo, Brazil. Its designer and builder, the firm Crosslam, says it is the tallest building of its type in the country. Dezeen reported the project on 12 November 2026.
The building is called Aurora 275. It is a hybrid-timber building, meaning it combines wood with other materials. Its skeleton has a reinforced concrete core, the steel-bar-and-concrete backbone used in many tall buildings. Around that core sit metal parts and mass-timber elements, including glulam beams and columns. Glulam, short for glued laminated timber, is layers of wood bonded into large, strong beams.
Crosslam usually works as an engineer for other companies. For Aurora 275 it took on the design and construction itself. The firm says the aim was to show what mass timber can do in Brazil. Its founder is José Alberto Corrêa.
The timber was produced in Crosslam's own factory, using wood sourced from Brazil. The company says a five-person team put the building up in four weeks. Pre-made parts from a factory are a big reason timber projects can move quickly on site, because most of the cutting and fitting happens before the parts reach the ground.
The tower holds 10 apartments, and each one has a balcony. Crosslam also claims the building is carbon neutral, meaning the greenhouse gases released in making and building it are balanced by measures such as storing carbon in the wood itself.
For the people who will live there, the practical details are the apartments, the balconies and the speed of the build. For the wider industry, Aurora 275 is one more example of wood being used for a multi-storey building in a country where concrete and steel dominate.
