VISIONARY ARCHITECT Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, wrote about the ideal house as a "machine for living." Although the phrase conjures some sterile high-Modernist folly, his residential interiors were machinelike only in their attention to utility—courtesy of elements like open floor plans and built-in furniture—and characterized by human-scale proportions and a strong indoor/outdoor connection.

A cabin Le Corbusier designed as a summer retreat in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on France's...