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

Hotel Designs

Case study: Lutron – lighting the next chapter of a legendary London hotel

October 13

Hotel Designs Case study: Lutron – lighting the next chapter of a legendary London hotel Case study: Lutron – lighting the next chapter of a legendary London hotel Pauline Brettell .

Lighting Hotels & cafés 2026 Member News Case Study GA

Read at Hotel Designs ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Case study: Lutron – lighting the next chapter of a legendary London hotel

Related

Ruby lands in France Hotel Designs

Maille: when beadwork becomes a rule for space Hotel Designs

Oberoi Hotels & Resorts presents a first glimpse of the Oberoi Sukoonvilas, Wadi Safar Hotel Designs

First look: House of Black completes Akira Back at St Regis Rome Hotel Designs

Nobu announces its debut in Puerto Rico Hotel Designs

Inside Serras Sevilla, Seville’s newly restored landmark hotel Hotel Designs