Dear Sir,

     I wasn't sure who to send this to. For one, the internet hates history, and destroys it. It is nearly impossible to find maps and documents that haven't been updated within a year or so. Another problem is that I know for a fact the construction of this building happened over a large span of time (half a decade or so), by different groups of people. And I’m not sure how to go about tracing this, and even if I were, it would probably be, it probably is, a waste of time. I don't expect any response, though comments are welcome, especially if you could direct me to the person to whom this letter should have been sent.

     And so this letter is addressed to the Architect(s) of Bridgewater-Raritan High School.
     For four years, I attended BRHS, and I openly complained about it. The school's design, I mean. Everyone did. The buildings were ugly. Everything was red and there was far too much brick; this was Bridgewater, not Newark. The design seemed at once impersonal, an institution of crushing proportions, and isolated, among a sea of parked cars. The architecture hated us. It mocked us daily. None of the buildings were directly connected, so students were forced to walk outside in between class.
     It was said the campus had been designed by a drunk Californian architect as a sick joke. Central Jersey is not LA. It snows here.
     It was as though the architect had pretended to accommodate the climate with a covered walkway that stretched to connect most of the buildings, and a squat canopy between the new two-story monster and its nearest neighbor, but hadn't actually. The covered walkway is narrow enough that when windy, rain blows from one side to the other, soaking everything and everyone in between. But it is heavy enough to require structural support of its own, coming in the form of rectilinear columns every six feet or so - a red army narrowing the path even more. And the canopy so generously shading those below from sun and snow? It stops ten feet short of actually doing its job; there is no way to escape from the 1000 Building without getting wet if it happens to be raining at all.
     The buildings are scattered about every which way, with little to differentiate them. They are unstacked bricks without grout to hold them together. There aren't enough windows, except where there are too many. The school as a whole is two-faced: approaching from one side and you are swallowed by it a hundred yards away, approach from the other and it is invisible until it consumes you entirely.
     And yet, as much as I have hated it solemnly for four years, and even now cringe at the thought of the place, it is treacherously beautiful. It resists itself in a handful obscure moments. It is trying to be a beast that cannot be beaten down, that cannot be understood. It is trying to make its inhabitants hate it, so they will be forced to focus, and to learn what they came to learn. It is trying to impose order on an orderless student body of teenagers who want nothing but rebellion and anarchy.
     But, you see, it is a teenager, too. It fails at what it wants so much to do. It is imperfect because it understands imperfect is part of learning. Its parts are flung about in every which way and it remains open to the less-than ideal weather that assault it on a daily basis. It stops short of doing what we want it to, because it knows we can't stand to be completely protected, to be smothered.
     And there are moments here that are undeniably beautiful, disgracefully so. A large section of one of the library's classrooms juts out of the harmonious solid blocks that define the individual buildings. It is tantalizingly symmetrical, grotesquely so, and yet completely out of place, offending whoever dares to look at it.
     Walking between the buildings is terrifying, because there is nothing and no one there. An unavoidable mountain pass. And yes, of course you are expecting something to happen. But it doesn’t, and so you glance back at those mountains, feeling lucking to have cheated death. You didn’t, but you feel as if you have. Thrill without actual danger.
     And of course, we want to get soaked and sunburnt and frostbitten. We want to be reminded of our suffering so as to be reminded of our existence. The sprawl, critiquing suburbia’s own, works only on this scale to give us of humanity’s most primal needs: an exposed reminder of reality.
     Even the plan works in certain places.  The artists and musicians and theater students have winding corridors to contemplate their art, but remain close enough to the cafeteria / big city hub to remain in contact with the rest of "society".
     It is completely detached from the site, save the looping arms that envelope it in an overgrown, gangly sort of way. And except in the northwest corner, where it rises from the ground like an ancient ruin sunken into the earth. It defies its nature, here, by defying all else. It is at once sloping and flat. It is its own landscape.
     The windows become sacred at sunrise. They become blinding, disorienting, and demand attention despite. Public school though it might be, this is a religion. Reverence is expected.
     Because it is gorgeously obscene. It doesn’t want to be. It doesn’t know how to be. But it is.
     Sir, your architecture is a disaster, but only because it is trying so hard to be.
Signed,
Architecture Student and BRHS Graduate

BROBDINGNAGIAN

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