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

Dezeen Architecture

OEB Architects channels 1980s interiors for London extension

11.04

Glossy ceramic tiles, a glass-block wall and a leafy garden were intended to evoke tropical modernism and 1980s interiors for London Tropical, an extension to a Victorian terrace designed by local…

Renovation & reuse

Read at Dezeen Architecture ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

OEB Architects channels 1980s interiors for London extension

Related

Former workshop converted into contemporary Japanese home with "a sense of the passage of time" Dezeen Architecture

Inside a Lake Tahoe A-Frame Cabin Where Vintage Finds, Playful Patterns, and Clever Renovation Ideas Create a Collected-Over-Time Look Homes & Gardens

JapanSANUが挑むリノベーションの最前線。既存建築の「記憶」を継承し、そこでしか出会えない体験をデザインする Tecture

IndiaThis restored haveli in Rajasthan's Mandawa has a sunken underground swimming pool AD India

SingaporeAt 67, this ‘Katong boy’ spent $100k renovating his 20-year-old home for his many hobbies Home & Decor

Remodelista Reconnaissance: A Transparent Floor Lamp with “Softness and Structure” Remodelista