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

Elastic expands its network with new London studio

October 13

Hotel Designs Elastic expands its network with new London studio Elastic expands its network with new London studio Pauline Brettell .

2026 Industry News Dimos Giorgou Elastic Architects

Read at Hotel Designs ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Elastic expands its network with new London studio

More from Hotel Designs on Uchi

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

Berlin signing becomes Bob W’s largest property to date Hotel Designs

Beyond the surface: textile flooring with a sense of place Hotel Designs

Alpine honey and a hydrothermal bathhouse: inside Rimrock Banff, Emblems Collection Hotel Designs

Ruby lands in France Hotel Designs

Maille: when beadwork becomes a rule for space Hotel Designs