Prefab housing isn't just for the..."thrifty" anymore! Yesterday Wired featured a selection of twelve modular, prefab housing units -- from lofts to place atop city skylines to 60 square-foot cabins with "cathedral ceilings". Today The NY Times reports that the idea has "become fashionable at architecture schools and among an upscale segment of the housing market." As such, MoMA has commissioned five architects to set up their prefab-ulous designs in their vacant lot on......

October 22-28: Lance Armstrong Week at Hill Country All this week, barbeque restaurant Hill Country is donating a portion of its sales to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which aids people with cancer and their families. Hill Country, 30 West 26th Street (between 6th and Broadway). 212-255-4544. October 25-November 2: Bon Appétit Supper Club and Café Bon Appétit Magazine opens a “pop-up” café, designed by The Rockwell Group. The café will serve food from notable chefs,......

At La Maison du Couscous, we never get away with ordering the first menu item we choose. Everything on the menu is available, of course, and in the back Fatima is ready to throw together whatever sweet, meltingly rich food we want. Still, the manager/waiter, in a burst of excited conversation, always insists that he knows best. We try to argue, but his passion about his food overwhelms us every time, and we let......

La Maison Tropicale, the Jean Prouvé-designed modernist movable metal house, has sold for $4.97M. While this fell right in the middle of the projected bid ($4 to 6M), Bloomberg.com noted this is "more than twice the price per area of a Park Avenue apartment." Guess that's expected when you buy real estate at Christie's. Uma Thurman's ex and Cameron Diaz's latest maybe love interest, hotelier Andre Balazs, was the high bidder. Though he has......

[photo of a Monet painting as drawn by John Singer Sargent in his letter to Monet / from NPR] Claude Monet's letters sold for $1.7 million yesterday at Artcurial, much more than the $600,000 expected. There were about a thousand in the collection. Some went to private collectors, while others went to the Musee d'Orsay, which recently also acquired Monet's Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars. Michel Cornebois, Monet's only living direct descendent, gave......

Now that the big tree is lit, Rockefeller Center draws tourists like moths to a flame. You may even find yourself under its sway. The tree is pretty impressive after all—more than 65 feet tall and adorned with more than 30,000 lights. But when the crowds swarm and the cold bites, remember relief is not far away. Just duck into La Maison du Chocolat, around the corner on 49th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues,......

Did your hipster colleague from Williamsburg bring in two dozen donuts to work from Peter Pan Doughnuts & Pastries? Did your client send a mammoth gift basket crammed with shortbread, biscotti and brownies to your office? Did the geeky IT support gal bring in homemade cupcakes? Did your tightwad boss make a display of bringing in several boxes of decadent chocolates from the likes of La Maison du Chocolat or Chocolate Bar? In short: Are......