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

Designboom

kengo kuma’s brick towers frame open-air pools at copenhagen’s upcoming bathhouse

10.28

soon to open on copenhagen’s paper island Kengo Kuma & Associates ‘ KAI Water Culture House is set to open on December 5th, 2026, on Copenhagen ‘s Papirøen (Paper Island).

Read at Designboom ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

kengo kuma’s brick towers frame open-air pools at copenhagen’s upcoming bathhouse

More from Designboom on Uchi

norman foster discusses his first watch with LEBOND and why good design transcends scale Designboom

this horse-shaped headset asks designers to see the world through animal eyes Designboom

studio loutsis integrates timber wayfinding into snøhetta’s theodore roosevelt library Designboom

edible sculptures and snap-button metal armatures activate philip johnson’s wolfhouse in NY Designboom

meet otter, the portable newborn warmer designed for hospitals with unreliable power Designboom

duyi han installs rain-inspired textile listening garden inside shanghai villa Designboom