Upon completing the eponymous Le Corbusier Building in Berlin in 1958, the pioneering Modernist architect Le Corbusier described the building as rising up to, a monumental size without taking from any of its parts their respect for the individual, physical and subjective dimension. Le Corbusier had confronted Berliners, in their divided city, with his concept of communal living--a 17-story reinforced-concrete building containing 557 apartments, with only nine corridors to provide access to all of them. Le Corbusier's -machine for living- still influences the inhabitants of the building, yet...