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

Wallpaper*

Step inside a reimagined Clerkenwell house with a bold, yet warm character

October 12

This Clerkenwell house represents the near-complete remodel of an existing property - the keen-eyed reader might recognise it as the home of designer Roksanda Ilincic ten years ago.

Read at Wallpaper* ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Step inside a reimagined Clerkenwell house with a bold, yet warm character

More from Wallpaper* on Uchi

Everything you need to know about Nanna Ditzel, the grand dame of Danish design Wallpaper*

Alex Margo Arden gathers Amy Winehouse's belongings for an intimate staging in London Wallpaper*

How South Barn, the reimagining of an Isle of Wight farm building, shines a light on ‘deep reuse’ Wallpaper*

Dive into the sumptuous, layered richness of post-war Belgian modernism Wallpaper*

From Frank Lloyd Wright to Charles and Ray Eames, step inside the finest architects’ houses Wallpaper*

What's it like living in a Japanese House? This book answers all questions Wallpaper*