Taste

A host's hand placing a glass of water on a wooden table for a visitor
Omotenashi Has No Price Tag
The glass of water that arrives before you ask, and the hospitality no bill can itemise. Read more...
A guest holding a glass beside a carefully arranged living room table
A Beautiful Room Where Nobody Can Relax
Hospitality begins where the photograph ends. Read more...
An older woman resting on a shaded public bench
Who Gets to Sit Here?
A city reveals its hospitality in the places where a person can stop. Read more...
A Good Room Has a Sound
We judge rooms with our eyes and live in them with our ears. The places we trust let a conversation stay where it was spoken. Read more...
The Second Visit
Everyone designs for the first impression. The second visit is where a place is actually decided. Read more...
An independent shop interior that feels like a lived in room
Why Good Shops Feel Like Homes
The rooms we remember do not merely display things. They give us permission to inhabit them. Read more...
A returning guest at a familiar neighbourhood cafe counter
The Luxury of Being a Regular
The rarest service is not being treated like everyone else. It is being remembered without being managed. Read more...
Wayfinding Is the Design You Only See When It Fails
Wayfinding Is the Design You Only See When It Fails
Taste · Rooms · No. 05 Wayfinding Is the Design You Only See When It Fails Nobody has ever admired a sign that worked. The entire discipline is judged by... Read more...
Templ store, Jakarta: the shelf with the Delft skull
Templ, at Temple Pace
A South Jakarta store built like a quiet shrine: muted stone, generous emptiness, a red room for resetting. What contemplative retail teaches about rooms. Read more...
Tropical architecture in Sri Lanka with deep shade and columns
Bawa's Long Section
Geoffrey Bawa drew houses the monsoon could walk through. Tropical modernism from the architect who spent forty years perfecting one garden, read from a Jakarta veranda. Read more...
A modern cafe counter with a monstera plant
Concrete, Plants, Repeat
Tropical modernism became the default look of every new cafe: raw concrete, monstera, open void. Where the style still thinks, and where it became wallpaper. Read more...
A table lamp and window lighting a quiet room
The Case for the Dim Room
Taste · Rooms · No. 01. Against the white downlight: a quiet argument for lamps, shadows and rooms that lower your voice. Read more...