Leonard J. Currie
Leonard Currie, FAIA, (1913 - 1996) headed the Virginia Tech architecture program, in Blacksburg, Virginia, from 1956 to 1962, where he was a seminal figure in shaping the future of the program. After Currie’s death in 1996, his daughter left his slide collection with Virginia Tech. The collection comprises 13,000 original slides chronicling his career in remarkable detail from studying with Gropius and Breuer at Harvard, through heading an Organization of American States program for low-cost housing in Bogotá, heading architecture programs at Virginia Tech and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and then settling into private practice in Blacksburg.
Currie Houses
Currie built three houses for his family, one in Six Moon Hill, Massachusetts (1949) and two in Blacksburg (1961 and 1982), He renovated one in Chicago (1966). Virginia Currie, his wife, also educated as an architect, doubtless consulted on their design. She received credit for the interior design of Currie House II in Blacksburg.
Currie House, Six Moon Hill, Lexington, Massachusetts
Currie House I
Currie House, Chicago
Currie House II
CINVA
Leonard Currie was the founding director of CINVA, a community development program in Colombia initiated by the Organization of American States in 1951. CINVA worked with the local population to alleviate severe housing shortages in urban and rural Colombia by designing new communities and developing construction methods that people could use to build their own houses. The CINVA team was international. They trained young Colombian professionals to expand and continue their work. This collection includes material from Bogotá and Boyacá.
The CINVA building in Bogotá was designed by CINVA staff, including Guillermo de Roux (design), Leonard Currie (landscape architect and construction captain), and others.
CINVA Building
Bogotá Neighborhoods
Boyacá
Leonard J. Currie Slides Collection is one of the collections from Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA).
Interested to see more items from the SCUA?
The SCUA is located in Carol M. Newman Library at Virginia Tech. SCUA holdings include manuscript collections, rare books, and records and publications relating to the history of the university. The collection also contains state, local and historical maps and photographs. SCUA mission is to collect and preserve unique, historical materials and provide access to them in their original form.
The SCUA is currently closed to the public. Representative materials from all of the collecting areas are accessible at https://bit.ly/scua-online