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

Design Milk

A Room-by-Room Layered Lighting Guide for Fall

10.30

Summer lighting comes easy. Just open the blinds and let the sunshine in. But as the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, we turn indoors for cozier ways to light a space.

Lighting

Read at Design Milk ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

A Room-by-Room Layered Lighting Guide for Fall

Related

Sabine Marcelis’ lava lamp world is in the pink – and you can buy a piece of it Wallpaper*

Japanアキッレ・カスティリオーニの照明・家具13選。イタリアデザイン界の偉大な原点 Modern Living

10 Best Bedside Lamps & Table Lamps (2026) Architectural Digest

VietnamNhững lớp trải nghiệm trong nhịp điệu ánh sáng và vật liệu ELLE Decoration Vietnam

Korea빛과 소리의 앙상블 Maison Korea

Lighting Design Meets the Art of Water Archiproducts

Latest

A Room-by-Room Layered Lighting Guide for Fall

Related

Sabine Marcelis’ lava lamp world is in the pink – and you can buy a piece of it Wallpaper*

Japanアキッレ・カスティリオーニの照明・家具13選。 イタリアデザイン界の偉大な原点 Modern Living

10 Best Bedside Lamps & Table Lamps (2026) Architectural Digest

VietnamNhững lớp trải nghiệm trong nhịp điệu ánh sáng và vật liệu ELLE Decoration Vietnam

Korea빛과 소리의 앙상블 Maison Korea

Lighting Design Meets the Art of Water Archiproducts

Japanアキッレ・カスティリオーニの照明・家具13選。イタリアデザイン界の偉大な原点 Modern Living