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

Livingetc

This Lighting Designer Has Worked With Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, and Oprah Winfrey — This Is the 'Understated' Fixture Your Home Is Missing, He Says

September 19

In his foreword to Nathan Orsman's debut monograph, Light: Illuminated Interiors and Architecture , trailblazing fashion designer Marc Jacobs writes: "I once visited a house designed by one of my…

Warm minimalism Lighting

Read at Livingetc ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

This Lighting Designer Has Worked With Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, and Oprah Winfrey — This Is the 'Understated' Fixture Your Home Is Missing, He Says

Related

What London Design Festival’s Soho Design District Revealed About Furniture, Lighting and Longevity Livingetc

‘minimalism feels cold when empty of narrative’: how aarke shapes its brand identity Designboom

The best places to buy affordable lighting House & Garden

KoreaThe Art of Bathing Maison Korea

The Best New Lighting of 2026 Domino

Materiais naturais dão o tom de apartamento minimalista Casa Vogue Brasil