Leiden Community College (ROC): over 10.000 students and 800 staff members here are awaiting relocation. In the vicinity of the Lammenschans train station a new vision of professional education is creating an industrious learning and working city: easy to reach, scaled to human dimensions, and literally transparent. Lammenschans: the triangle between the Leiden-Utrecht rail line (‘RijnGouwelijn’), the Rijn-Schiekanaal and Lammenschansweg (near the A4 motorway). An entrance to Leiden’s eastern flank with potential.The CCL, offering professional education to thousands of students in hundreds of programmes and dozens of buildings. ‘Innovative learning’: “Learning at an open, enterprising and socially involved institution where the individual career takes priority”. This innovation takes shape in conjunction with the building. The new CCL stacks traffic flows and functionalities in one airy, meandering building on what was previously an unused car park belonging to the institution. In one fell swoop the neighbouring residential area was spared excessive noise and shade nuisance, and moving stress and property costs were kept to a minimum. A surprisingly-designed city of learning where every type of education becomes visible. A sustainable addition to the concrete core activation: by consistently placing 1.20 m concrete floor sheets 60 cm away from each other, all of the mechanics can be installed in the resulting intervals. These are topped with a minimum concrete layer with fixed connection points, and with a cover sheet underneath. This eliminates the need for dropped ceilings or cable grooves, and the lighter building is entirely flexible in terms of mechanics.Imagine: take the small buildings located on a huge college campus that are currently spread across the grounds at considerable distance from one another and stack them to form five sloping towers on three different large tables. By doing so you would gain outdoor space for squares. Then you could group the individual buildings on and around the tabletops. This would create the interior courtyards. The result would not be a single building; instead, it would be a vertical city consisting of all sorts of small buildings, connected by markets and slopes. There are staggered squares not only in front of the building, but also inside the building, with greenery and shops. Escalators provide access to the most central market in the middle of the building, where the library and information centre are located. The various activities are grouped around these markets, meeting places and cross pollination. Together, all of the tenants form the ‘ROC city’.
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