Weir Institute

Publication Date

Spring 4-22-2026

Presentation Length

30 minutes

College

O'More College of Architecture & Design

Department

Architecture

Student Level

Undergraduate

Faculty Mentor

Caleb Walder

Presentation Type

Gallery

Summary

The New River Gorge is a record of non-human and human work on the land. Each generation has left its own incision in the terrain. This building creates a final cut that reveals the others. Non-human carving shaped the gorge. Human carving destabilized the hillside. The project reveals how water now negotiates between them.

The project frames the landscape of the New River Gorge as the result of three related conditions of carving: non-human, human, and shared. Over geologic time, non-human forces, primarily the movement of water through erosion and sediment transport, carved the deep valley of the gorge itself. In the last two centuries, human activity introduced a second carving through coal mining, logging, and the infrastructure that supported extraction, cutting into the slopes and exposing geological strata while removing the mature forest systems that once moderated runoff. These interventions altered both the physical terrain and the hydrological behavior of the watershed, allowing rainfall to move more rapidly across disturbed soils and carry industrial residues such as Selenium through surface water systems. The architecture introduces a third condition where human and non-human processes operate together. Positioned across the slope as an elevated research bar, the building allows natural runoff to pass beneath while creating a series of moments where water can be observed, slowed, and measured. Through this framework the project transforms the site from a landscape defined by extraction into one where water, research, and public observation collectively reveal and study the ongoing work of the land.

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