The Department of Wellness is a new institution that exists to care for citizens. This thesis is the design of a headquarters facility for that agency in Washington D.C. It explores the productive overlap between the concerns of wellness and those of government. Rather than wellness being a topic of individual pursuit, this work imagines that actions of care are collectivized. The effort investigates how these operations can be organized, accessed, and imaged architecturally.

This thesis works from existing conditions at three scales. At the scale of the body, it asks, "What if wellness services were offered universally to citizens, rather than through conspicuous consumption by individuals?" At the scale of the government, it asks, "If care is our goal, how might we build institutions differently, both physically and conceptually?" At the scale of the building, it asks, "What possibilities are enabled through radical alteration, instead of starting from scratch?"