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

The World of Interiors

Hamish Bowles’s tribute to Jean-Louis Riccardi

11.01

Mr Bowles recalls Jean-Louis Riccardi, the incomparable decorator who died this summer

Culture

Read at The World of Interiors ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Hamish Bowles’s tribute to Jean-Louis Riccardi

More from The World of Interiors on Uchi

The best new modern furniture showcased in Flintham Hall’s conservatory The World of Interiors

Wicker: how Wētā Workshop wove its magic on Alexander Skarsgård The World of Interiors

Sophie Conran transforms a tired hotel into an elegant home in Wiltshire The World of Interiors

Craft in the UK: can we save it? The World of Interiors

Artist and YBA tutor Michael Craig-Martin’s thoroughly modern Venetian apartment The World of Interiors

Antique dealer Drew Pritchard salvages a stunning Georgian abode in Bath The World of Interiors