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

This Contemporary Brick Home Pays Homage To Its Local Neighbourhood

October 11

This Contemporary Brick Home Pays Homage To Its Local Neighbourhood Architecture by Christina Karras The new house was designed as the family home of Lande Architects director Lachlan McArdle.

Read at The Design Files ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

This Contemporary Brick Home Pays Homage To Its Local Neighbourhood

More from The Design Files on Uchi

How An Architect Built These Compact Homes For Under $300k Each The Design Files

This Renovated Coastal Shack Makes A Case For Small-Space Living The Design Files

Meet The Aussie Business Elevating Your Flat-Pack Cabinetry The Design Files

How A Steeply Sloped Site Shaped This Striking Balwyn North Home The Design Files

Inside Artist Beci Orpin’s Eclectic 140-Year-Old Family Terrace The Design Files

7 Designers Share Everything They’re Shopping For Right Now The Design Files