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

est living

Read Now | est Magazine: First Light

10.30

This is my first editor’s letter since signing off at Inside Out magazine in 2010—and it is rather like riding a bicycle. The return to editing feels instinctive, embedded in muscle memory.

Read at est living ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Read Now | est Magazine: First Light

More from est living on Uchi

Chaille Writes a Bold New Chapter for a Marais Apartment est living

The Latest Design News from Tongue & Groove, Studioutte & More est living

Sally Caroline Welcomes Us Inside a Melbourne Homecoming est living

Studio Doherty Softens the Edges of an Edwardian Family Home est living

Marker Architecture Let The River Write The Brief For This Cabin est living

Marble Meets Checkerboard in this Sydney Home by Smac Studio est living