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

Homes to Love

A colourful homestead set beneath century-old Moreton Bay fig trees

10.20

For many people, it’s love at first sight when stepping across the threshold of their future home. For Alexandra Orchard-Gibb, it happened on the driveway of a farm in Ashwell, Queensland, as she…

Read at Homes to Love ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

A colourful homestead set beneath century-old Moreton Bay fig trees

More from Homes to Love on Uchi

Château DIY Australia is the best new renovation show you’ve never heard of Homes to Love

Inside the Adairs Summer House launch at Villa Alezalia Homes to Love

Rick and Tayla’s unfinished garage and backyard left the judges “frustrated” Homes to Love

Chantel and Wyatt’s courtyard deemed their “best space on The Block” Homes to Love

Privacy is non-existent in Adam and Jolene’s “fishbowl’ front yard where everything is on display Homes to Love

Courtney and Sev’s controversial wine cellar and “sexy garage” secure them the win Homes to Love