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Abstract
The American government operates within structures and landscapes that impede democracy rather than facilitate it. This dysfunctional built environment opposes the ideals and inhibits the goals of democracy to the detriment of American citizens. Through an examination of historic government typologies and their built environments, this thesis asserts that political will manifests itself through built form and indicates government intention and ideology. Applied to the United States, this concept yields a critique of both the American democracy and its built environment, exposing an inconsistency between the two. The issues revolving around a modern redesign of the government built environment are contemporized through an exploration of political transparency, government security, digital media, and peak oil. In the end, design principles and applications are offered that seek to provide a method of realigning government ideals and built form to facilitate the American democracy.