Coco Lapine Design

9 stories

Coco Lapine DesignA pink kitchen, beige walls and mint green window and door frames This apartment (Styled by Olivia Lind , photographed by Frederic Boukari for Historiska Hem ) speaks in color, quietly but with real conviction.

10.16

Coco Lapine DesignDifferent muted paint colors elevate the look of a cozy Swedish flat Earthy tones and considered layering give this home (via Bjurfors ) a grounded, lived-in warmth that feels genuinely inviting.

08.28

Coco Lapine DesignA small apartment with a sky-blue living room and a modern kitchen Bold color defines every considered decision in this compact home (via Stadshem ). A saturated sky blue anchors the living spaces while warm wood and soft whites keep the palette grounded and…

08.25

Coco Lapine DesignA contemporary home with a stainless steel kitchen and an arched coffee corner This apartment (via Wrede ) makes a strong case for embracing contrast as a design philosophy. The kitchen pairs an entirely stainless-steel finish with a burgundy-tiled coffee corner, and that…

08.21

Coco Lapine DesignA grey shaker kitchen with a pink tile backsplash paired with a pink bedroom This apartment (Styled by Anna van Keppel , photographed by Jocke Ono for Historiska Hem ) leads with considered color and a fearless eye for detail.

08.18

Coco Lapine DesignA contemporary home with modern furniture and limewash walls This historic apartment (via Historiska Hem ) carries the quiet confidence of a home that knows exactly what it wants to be.

08.14

Coco Lapine DesignExposed brick in a modern apartment with a loft bed An industrial loft with a surprisingly warm soul, this unique apartment (Styled by Livin Deco , photographed by Mariah Sahlander via Stadshem ) balances raw texture with an earthy, considered…

08.11

Coco Lapine DesignCozy flat with a vintage kitchen and a window seat Quiet restraint defines every corner of this early modernist apartment (via Historiska Hem ). Original architectural bones meet a considered, earthy palette that feels genuinely lived in rather than…

08.07

Coco Lapine DesignPastel colors in a Swedish home with an eye-catching bookshelf Sage green walls and an abundance of living plants give this home (for sale via Svenska Mäklarhuset ) a grounded, natural character that feels considered rather than curated by trend.

08.04

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