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

← Uchi Archive

ArchDaily

7th door Hangzhou Restaurant / Chakchak Studio

10.22

Hangzhou is a historic Chinese city and home to world-class corporations like Alibaba and DeepSeek. Located near "West Lake" in the heart of the city, "Meihuatang" is a registered modern cultural…

Hotels & cafés

Read at ArchDaily ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

7th door Hangzhou Restaurant / Chakchak Studio

Related

Hotel boutique Mira Earth Studios en Valle de Guadalupe AD Mexico

Six generations in, this Japanese bolthole is shaping a new chapter in ryokan design Wallpaper*

The 42 best hotels in London for 2026, tried and tested by our editors House & Garden

À Oberkampf, deux nouveaux restaurants d'architectes à découvrir absolument AD France

Gran Meliá to make UAE debut in Dubai’s Jumeirah 1 Sleeper