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

BluPrintPhilippines

How Cultural Knowledge Can Move Design Beyond Cultural References

September 30

Culture in design does not always announce itself through a recognizable motif, material, or symbol. It can also be embedded in the relationships designers build, the knowledge they listen to, the…

Architecture Arts & Culture Philippine Architecture

Read at BluPrint ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

How Cultural Knowledge Can Move Design Beyond Cultural References

More from BluPrint on Uchi

PhilippinesSketching Modernity 04: The DBP Building BluPrint

PhilippinesAnthology Expands the Conversation Around Philippine Architecture BluPrint

PhilippinesSketching Modernity 03: Asian Institute of Management BluPrint

PhilippinesPhilippine Interior Design Claims Its Place in Southeast Asia BluPrint

PhilippinesSketching Modernity 02: Ramon Magsaysay Center BluPrint

PhilippinesMaker’s Mark: Rinna Soriano on the Discipline of Making BluPrint