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

House & Garden

A dreamy medieval house in Oxfordshire where history is layered with intuition and colour

September 22

Matthew Rice has turned Ham Court into a dreamy refuge that balances layers of history with playful interiors and a garden full of charm

Houses

Read at House & Garden ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

A dreamy medieval house in Oxfordshire where history is layered with intuition and colour

More from House & Garden on Uchi

Austen Powers: Live like Lizzie Bennet with these historically-minded homewares House & Garden

What was a Regency interior really like and do TV shows and films get it right? House & Garden

Wood panelling in the home: everything you need to know House & Garden

Can furniture make you fall in love? Buchanan Studio's new artist collaboration is rooted in emotion House & Garden

27 best sofas for 2026, according to House & Garden editors House & Garden

A Notting Hill townhouse where almost every element is reclaimed, inherited or repurposed House & Garden