Monocle

3 stories

MonocleBeirut has planted a design scene that takes pride in its roots Beirut certainly wasn’t built in a day but it has repeatedly come close to being undone in one. I first visited the Lebanese capital just before the October protests in 2019, which marked the…

10.17

MonocleThe Bayeux Tapestry reveals an abundance of naked truths – about humans’ unchanging nature I was invited to a party this week to mark 40 years of The Independent , the newspaper-turned-content powerhouse where I worked for close to a decade before joining Project Monocle.

10.17

MonocleArt, sound and a very small house: Three Tokyo exhibitions to see in October Tokyo’s creative scene is in full swing this autumn. Monocle stops by three galleries to peruse a graphic design survey, sample an immersible audio visual installation and explore a fresh take on a…

10.14

A room is a decision about how you want to be tired at the end of the day.

I live in forty-eight square metres in Tokyo with one good chair and far too many bowls, so I have had to mean that. I trained as an architect and left to write, which my teachers took badly. Uchi (内) means inside, and it means home: the room you come back to. The palette comes after the tiredness. So does the name on the lamp.

This is where I keep what the world's rooms are doing. Around seventy sources, read in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, French and English: an apartment in Seoul, a house outside Taipei, a Copenhagen showroom seen from here rather than from Denmark. East first, because east is where I am sitting.

Each story is a headline, an excerpt of a few lines, one photograph and a link to whoever did the work. We never reprint the piece, and the photograph belongs to the person who took it. When a room was written up in Korean or Italian it stays in Korean or Italian here; the link takes you to the writer's own words.

I am not trying to be complete. I am trying to notice.

— Mio Tachibana, Tokyo