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 Design Files

Renovation Diaries: Creative Director Annie Portelli’s Savvy $33k Kitchen Transformation

10.21

Renovation Diaries: Creative Director Annie Portelli’s Savvy $33k Kitchen Transformation Interiors by Christina Karras Kitchen cabinets by IKEA with custom fronts in Bach Blue and Natural American…

Kitchens & bathrooms Renovation & reuse

Read at The Design Files ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Renovation Diaries: Creative Director Annie Portelli’s Savvy $33k Kitchen Transformation

Related

A Victorian Terrace Renovation With Playful Pops Of Colour The Design Files

This Haussmannian Apartment Hadn’t Been Renovated Since the 1970s — Now Its Black Kitchen Gives the Small Space a New Identity Livingetc

Before & After: A 2010s Kitchen Remade to Fit Its Craftsman Bungalow Bones Domino

Before & After: A Giant Fridge Sticker, Faux Beams, and 25 Days to Pull Off a Kitchen Reno Domino

Before + After: How This Renovated Melbourne Home Kept Its Victorian Soul The Design Files

A Modern Cottage-Inspired Renovation For An Artist’s Family Home The Design Files