The Nordroom

10 stories

The NordroomA Green Palette and Original Features in a Victorian Garden Apartment Near the quiet fringes of southwest London’s Clapham Old Town, this Victorian garden apartment pairs richly colored, dark green interiors with views of climbing roses and hydrangeas.

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The NordroomColorful, Bohemian Interiors in a Turn-of-the-Century Stockholm Duplex On the top two floors of an early 20th-century apartment building in Stockholm’s Vasastan area, this spacious duplex apartment pairs historic character with an abundance of color and a bohemian…

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The NordroomCozy English Cottage-Style Interiors in an Early 20th-Century Stockholm Apartment On the fourth floor of an early 20th-century apartment building in Stockholm’s Råsunda area, this 63-square-meter apartment combined early twentieth-century character with carefully crafted additions…

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The NordroomGeorgian Grandeur and a Soft deVOL Shaker Kitchen in a Bath Townhouse In a Georgian townhouse in Bath, interior consultant Poppie Clements and deVOL Kitchens teamed up to create a beautiful kitchen with Shaker-style cabinetry, grand Georgian proportions, and period…

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The NordroomSerene Rooms in a Row with Color Accents in an Early 20th-Century Apartment On the second floor of an early 20th-century apartment building in the Södermalm area of Stockholm, this recently renovated apartment features two original Swedish fireplaces, high ceilings, and a…

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The NordroomA Victorian Home with a Rich Burgundy Kitchen and Danish Brick Extension Set along a handsome Victorian terrace in London’s Stroud Green area, this four-bedroom family home unfolds through a series of richly colored, thoughtfully crafted spaces.

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The NordroomWarm Interiors and Original Details in a Unique 1890s Family Villa Overlooking the centuries-old trees of Culemborg’s historic castle garden in the Netherlands, this distinctive villa occupies a setting with a remarkable past.

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The NordroomA Contemporary Inglis Hall Kitchen Brings New Life to a 700-Year-Old Wiltshire Manor Designing a contemporary kitchen for a historic home is always a balancing act. Modern life calls for practicality, generous storage, and hardworking materials, while centuries-old architecture…

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The NordroomA Douglas Fir Extension Wraps Around an Arts and Crafts House in Petersfield In the heart of Petersfield, this spectacular Edwardian home pairs historic character with expressive contemporary architecture and a beautiful green garden.

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The NordroomCozy Pastel-Colored Interiors in a Georgian English Farmhouse Set behind a stone boundary wall in the peaceful Wiltshire countryside, this Georgian farmhouse is surrounded by gardens and gently rolling country views.

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発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo