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

STIRIndia

Hella Jongerius on disrupting systems and embracing the absurd

10.28

Speaking with STIR, the Dutch industrial designer talks about the intelligence of hands, expand

Read at STIR ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Hella Jongerius on disrupting systems and embracing the absurd

More from STIR on Uchi

IndiaArtipelag s INNER CHILD proffers creativity as a joyful relief for a forlorn world STIR

IndiaA gently rising stepped ramp defines TETRO Arquitetura s oblique Ascendente House STIR

IndiaYinka Ilori s first monograph is an anthology of stories embedded in his chairs STIR

IndiaTrust the water and bear witness Looking beyond the glass at Palestine Design Week STIR

IndiaReading between the signs Tanya George on experiencing a city through typography STIR

IndiaCharudatt Pande s wadas are portraits of a city between memory and ruin STIR