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. More than a hundred sources, read in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese 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

Sketching Modernity 07: The Meralco Building

11.06

Revisiting Jose Maria Zaragoza’s 1969 modernist landmark on Ortigas Avenue, where corporate architecture, performing arts, and personal memories come together.

Read at BluPrint ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Sketching Modernity 07: The Meralco Building

More from BluPrint on Uchi

PhilippinesLessons From Anthology 2026: Dominic Galicia on Cultural Identity in Architecture BluPrint

PhilippinesRoom to Grow: A Japanese-Inspired Approach to Family Living at Yume at Riverpark BluPrint

Philippines“What the Pop!” Exhibition Translates Four Generations of Filipino Culture Into Interactive Interior Spaces BluPrint

PhilippinesDesign Week Philippines 2026 Brings Filipino Creatives Together Through “Sama All” BluPrint

PhilippinesSketching Modernity 06: CCP Main Theater BluPrint

PhilippinesLessons From Anthology 2026: Redefining Architecture Beyond the “Culture of Capital” BluPrint