# Home is not a building type

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2026-07-21

housing, home, typology, apartment, low-rise house, single-family home, condo, real estate, development

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> Home is not where you live, but where they understand you. — Christian Morgenstern

One of the things that I like to be annoying about on this blog is the fact that "home" is not a building type. I say this because "home" is often shorthand for ground-oriented, single-family housing. For example, someone might say to me, "Do you think you'll one day buy a home?" And I will be pedantic and say, "But I already own a home."

The words we choose, often because of cultural convention, show our biases. When people associate home with low-rise housing, I can only assume it's because many cities have had a long history of thinking of apartments as [disease-breeding tenements](https://brandondonnelly.com/disease-breeding-tenementshttps://brandondonnelly.com/disease-breeding-tenements). So we oftentimes see low-rise housing as homes, and apartments as something more utilitarian, like a unit.

But in the end, a home is not a building type; it is a psychological state of belonging. It is where comfort, safety, belonging, and identity hopefully all intersect.

One of the interesting things that Bianca and I have both noticed since bringing home our daughter, Vivienne, is that our feeling of home has been heightened. There's additional life within these four walls, and now it is also a place where she is kept safe and protected from the outside world.

I'm not sure if any of you have experienced this, but we both felt it immediately, and it has us saying to each other on a regular basis, "I love our home." And you know what? The view looks pretty great from up here.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/home-is-not-a-building-type)*