I dislike the term residential unit.

It makes a home sound like some sort of widget. When have you ever heard someone say, "unit sweet unit"? Never. And yet this is generally what we use to refer to housing that comes in an apartment form and is not grade-related.

If you build low-rise houses, you're a home builder. But anything beyond that, and the home moniker apparently needs to fall away.

There is, of course, a very good reason for this and it is that we have a longstanding history of not liking apartments. And so this is in all likelihood some sort of carryover of that bias. Surely there's no way to create a morally-correct home in an apartment. So let's use a more utilitarian sounding name, like unit.

I'm sure that I have used the word "unit" countless times on this blog throughout the years. But I am working to remove it from my vocabulary. And now you can all hold me accountable to that.

This is a really nice kitchen extension. In response to an "oppressively" low ceiling height, the architects -- DGN Studio -- lowered the existing ground floor by about 500mm. At the same time, they created a kind of "concrete tray" that fills the width of the Victorian home's property and extends outward to create a sunken patio space off said kitchen. From the outside, this drop makes the house feel as if it's sitting on a concrete plinth -- hence the name. (A good photo of this can be found here.) It's a simple move, but a good one. Sometimes you just have to play with the section. If you can't see the above video, click here.