Leonardo College: A School in Motion

The new Leonardo College in Leiden is a school for MAVO, HAVO and VWO, as well as an official Top Sports Talent School. The sports and dance profile of the school are translated into a dynamic, sturdy main shape of the new development.

The unique thing about the sports and dance profile can be experienced everywhere: from the auditorium, also used as theatre and dance hall, to the outdoor grounds with sports theme. To optimally utilise these outdoor grounds for sports and relaxation, the 800 bikes are stored indoors.
Even the architecture refers to top sports, with shiny facades in gold, silver and bronze anodised aluminium.

A school that encourages motion based, on the conviction that this creates more energy, a better mood and better performances. In short: a school in motion, in every possible way.

Integral Design Process

The Final Design we, as construction adviser for the full main load-bearing structure, have created in collaboration with the client, Stichting Scholengemeenschap Leonardo Da Vinci, users, municipality of Leiden, Ector Hoogstad Architecten, N30 architecten, ICS adviseurs, Zenzo maatschappelijk vastgoed and Lithos bouw & ontwikkeling.

The characteristic properties of the design vision, including the open heart, protruding facade, the external height line and the high level of flexibility in terms of layout are central in the integral design.

Applied Load-bearing Structure

The applied load-bearing structure is coordinated with the wishes for this specific project, where we opted for hollow-core slab floors with integrated beams and the application of concrete-filled columns.
The chosen load-bearing structure realises maximum flexibility for both the freedom in layout and the installations.

We intensively collaborated with the executing party in an early stage of the integral design process. This allowed for the early implementation of optimisations to realise a relatively short construction time.

The construction of the Leonardo College starts in June and the school will be opened in the summer holiday of 2021.