Leonardo's Bridge

We've been challenged to liven up a classroom training session with a tool that would foster intercultural communication and work with limited resources.

The Leonardo Bridge is a dynamic activity that achieves stability among participants, promotes team spirit and boosts the capacity to overcome obstacles. The idea originates from the universal genius Leonardo da Vinci, who around the year 1480 designed a portable bridge that could be assembled without tools.

The participants' task was to construct a 4-metre bridge that could support itself, using 28 planks and with no other tools allowed. After a brainstorming session in two subgroups, the participants began constructing the bridge from both ends. Success in building the two parts of the bridge unites the two teams and makes them one.

The key factors have been coordination, cooperation, creativity and alignment between the two teams. Adapting and accepting others’ views and ideas was one of the client’s main requests, and the result has been an independently built structure that functions as a metaphor for the group’s internal and external stability.