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

Elle Decoration UK

Inside a Sao Paulo home with 1970s soul and a modern outlook

09.29

Architect Felipe Carolo wanted to honour the history of his apartment while creating a layout designed for contemporary living

Vintage & mid-century

Read at Elle Decoration UK ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Inside a Sao Paulo home with 1970s soul and a modern outlook

Related

IndiaAdaptive Reuse Gives This 1970s Patna Bungalow A New Life Rooted In Wellness And Dining Design Pataki

Holloway Li Channels Mad Men’s Mid-Century Glamour in Locke London Canary Wharf Yatzer

Do books furnish a room? Vintage book seller Emma Hammar argues the case The Modern House Journal

An Iconic Midcentury Hotel Reborn, a Belgrade Hi-Fi Listening Bar, and More Sight Unseen

Cozy flat with a vintage kitchen and a window seat Coco Lapine Design

Unlocked: Jenny and Michael Barraclough’s 1970s self-build on the banks of the River Thames The Modern House Journal