Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School

Historie

Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School is an upper secondary school in Larvik, Norway, named for the explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who was born in the city. It was formed by combining the previous upper secondary schools in Larvik. It is one of the largest upper secondary schools in Norway, with approximately 1,650 students, and offers 10 programmes or courses of instruction. The school was split between several locations until a new building, built as a combined project with Arena Larvik, opened on 17 August 2009.HistoryThor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School was formed in 2004 by the merger of the previously existing upper secondary schools in Larvik: Farris videregående skole, Gloppe skole, Kilden videregående skole and Larvik gymnas . The gymnasium's history goes back to the foundation of Laurvigs Middelskole in 1824; the Thor Heyerdahl name was first used in 1994. The municipality of Larvik bought the gymnasium building and acquired Ahlefeldtsgate 6, 8 and 10 for 30.3 million kroner, but did not acquire the Farris or Gloppe school sites. On 17 August 2009 the school's new building opened, uniting all courses on a single campus. The official opening ceremony took place on 18 September. The building was designed by the Danish architecture firm of schmidt hammer lassen, who won the design competition in January 2006 in collaboration with the SLA landscape architecture firm with a proposal named Synergy. The project also included Arena Larvik, which the school uses for sports; foreseen in 2004 to cost 597 million kroner, after construction costs rose sharply the entire project was budgeted at 983 million kroner in November 2006. Construction began in June 2007 with the demolition of the old school; ground was broken for the new building in August. In the interim the school was housed in temporary space including a 900sqm tent. The new building has five storeys in addition to workshops; it is connected to the arena by a first-floor bridge. Interior decoration of the new building was budgeted at approximately 1.8 million kroner, the design scheme being chosen by a jury. The building was nominated for Building of the Year in its class by Byggeiindustrien.