This thesis was based on the belief that architecture can comment on social and institutional structures. As a vehicle for this investigation, an event was chosen which informed the making of the architecture. The event was the death of a woman at the hands of off-duty Policemen. The proposed structure makes a mark on Police Headquarters in downtown Houston and provides a space for the community and the police to interact. The project explored architecture as a metaphor of society and this institution specifically, using such words as stable, static, heavy and opaque to define both the image of the institution, and the appearance of the headquarters building. To affect this building, such words as fragmented, light, unstable and warped were used to develop the architecture of the additions. The additions, as aberrations, use the true structure of the building to reveal the inappropriateness of the image of Police Headquarters.