Thanks for guiding me here Lithium! 
Yes there are many ways to go, from what you describe I think creating my own Vbo/Ibo:s might be the best option for me.
With lower level do you mean using plain OpenGL instead of Cinder? I do want to create meshes with quads, but I imagine that I always can/must convert quads into triangles when sending the mesh to the GPU?
I have found a really good guide about mesh creation in Cinder that I will read trough, here:
Mesh Creation In Cinder
