AT THE BEGINNING OF 2008, the Palast der Republik—the formerly gold-mirrored (and asbestos-contaminated) showcase building of the German Democratic Republic—was still a recognizable feature of the center of Berlin, albeit only as a raw skeleton. Its dismantling had already been under way for nearly two years, and the pace of the structure’s removal made it seem less a demolition than a kind of “unbuilding”—a continual, barely discernible process of subtraction: piece by piece, element by element. Watching this former symbol of the socialist dream of a better future slowly melting