Half Story height is a waste

Hi all,

I don't see a good place for Design challenges....

My house is built with a daylight basement, so the main floor is a half story above the ground. Its the worse design ever imho. Any deck at the kitchen level has this half story height of difficult to use space under it. And carrying EVERYTHING from the kitchen to a different height deck is a huge pain too.

The half story height is about 5' on the top, a little over 4' if you figure beams and joists... Its just the most painful height to have to hunch and duck to get into.

Best use of that difficult space is storage of empty plant pots under one of them and considering putting water storage under the other one, but that leaves a lot of odd shaped unused spaces too.

Better ideas out there?

Insulate it and make root cellars/cold storage?

Build a permanent ferro-concrete watertank as its base, top with a normal deck, cover with lattice and vines and you'll have a cool deck in the summer, warm in winter and great water storage for rain.