Fred Bernstein

Once upon a time, owning a piece of 56 Leonard Street – a condo tower designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron – would have set you back at least $3.5 million.

Today, the building sold on-line for just over $1,000.

What to do about Chicago's embarrassing Big Dig?

The Chicago Spire, a 150-story tower condo tower, was designed by Santiago Calatrava for a site overlooking Lake Michigan. The cocky, corkscrew shaped building was expected to cost more than $1 billion, which, even for Calatrava (whose projects have been known to go over budget), was a lot. But the developers ran out of money, and all they have to show for their efforts is a giant hole -- 76 feet deep and 110 feet in diameter -- in the ground. (Calatrava says he is owed more than $11 million for his design work.)

So what's to become of the hole, a literal architectural depression? The Chicago Architectural Club is asking architects (and architecture students) to put on their spire-shaped thinking caps. "Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward?" asked the Club, announcing an international competition. Blair Kamin, a Chicago architecture critic, asked the same question on his blog last year, and the answers came pouring in. (Responses included: a scuba diving tank; "pudding"; the Obama presidential library)

I want this house, for three reasons: Location, location, and location.

Or maybe I should just say: Marfa, Marfa, Marfa. I'm referring to the tiny town in West Texas that's hard to get to, and even harder to leave.

There's something about Marfa -- about the light, the air, the landscape -- that artists find irresistible (but also, sadly for those who haven't been there, indescribable). Donald Judd, the minimalist sculptor, arrived in 1971, and stayed. His works fill several large industrial buildings in the center of town, and hundreds of acres on the outskirts.

Every object Judd created has a stunning simplicity.

This house is listed for $180,000 -- about average for Marfa. (There aren't a lot of comparables in a town of just 2,100 people.) If I bought it, I would try to give it a Judd-ian simplicity. So it doesn't matter that I'm not crazy about the house's faux-colonial decor. I like its solidity, its symmetry. And what I don't like would be easy to remove.

Why does anyone become an architect? It's a terrible profession, even in good times. And these aren't good times.

But for some, they're God times. There's nothing new about architects creating to honor their creator. Antonio Gaudi called his Sagrada Familia in Barcelona the "last great sanctuary of Christendom," and became world-famous for his efforts to complete it.

Others toil in obscurity. But now a film director and a researcher have documented the lives of five men who feel compelled by God to build large structures.

The challenge for realtors, in sluggish markets, is getting customers to pull the (proverbial) trigger.

But Ben Edsall, a Kansas City realtor, may have the solution: his "Buy a house, get a gun" promotion.

Edsall's firm, Turn-Key Properties LLC, is offering customers vouchers, worth $250, redeemable at The Olathe Gun Shop. (The offer is valid on sales of property in Kansas of $100,000 or more.)

"I love guns, I love real estate. I've found a way to combine them," Edsall told the Kansas City Real Estate Examiner.

I hate to kick a man while he's down.

But Tiger Woods has made me really mad.

Not his accident/affairs--his roof.

One thing we know about Tiger (from all the photos of his house) is that he's got a lot of roof. Enough for a couple of big-box stores, with an elementary school or two thrown in.

And what isn't on those acres and acres of roof? A single solar panel, that's what.

Woods lives near Orlando, in the Sunshine State. Orlando's tourist site advertises that it gets 300 days of sunshine a year. All that sunlight could be turning Tiger's roof into a clean, silent, efficient power plant.

Compare this to a home by David Wilson, an architect who lives in Stinson Beach, near San Francisco. Wilson's house is only 1,400 square feet -- he has, at most, one-tenth as much roof as Tiger Woods. Plus, Stinson gets a lot of fog.

But Wilson installed about 400 feet of solar panels on his roof. (They're also known as PV, or photovoltaic, panels.)

I don't know what drove Tiger Woods out of his house at 2:30 a.m. But I'm guessing the house was part of the problem.

Have you seen the bird's-eye photos of Tiger's lair? It's a behemoth -- there's enough roof for an airplane hangar -- except it has more angles than an origami caterpillar.

The man is known for fluidity, grace -- but his house is overbearing, overwrought. It's not a golfer; it's a linebacker (on steroids).

But it isn't the style of the house that may have sent Tiger fleeing. It's the agglomeration of space into a single volume. Everyone has been in one of these McMansions -- vast, but without the feeling that you can ever get away. Huge archways link every space to every other space. No room feels separate or enclosed.

Tiger, like lots of Americans, has plenty of square footage -- but no real room to breathe.