> Could we come up with novel things to do with this deep interior space?
A friend of mine had an opportunity to build the house for himself and his family. He architected the house as - mostly - several groups of 3 spaces in each.
One is the living space. It's a cabinet, or a bedroom, or a living room with a sofa. It ought to have windows, furniture, some space to walk in between. Could be several "rooms", even with doors.
Another is the bathroom space. Shower, toilet, bathtub, sink with mirror. Doesn't really need to have windows.
And the third, most interesting, is the storage space. Shelves. Places on the floor to put bulky items, like a big vacuum cleaner. Boxes - conveniently sized, maybe labeled. Places to hang clothes. Space to walk inside, so putting an item or finding and taking one is easy. This space doesn't need to have windows.
The storage space is rather big, because you're supposed to keep all the stuff which clutters the living space there. If the storage is overflowing, well, you really have a problems with too many things, but if not - it's very convenient to use as a buffer for something which becomes unused and inconvenient.
Maybe we can structure those deeper buildings in a similar manner, so that living spaces would have windows, and miscellaneous spaces would not and would use that "depth" for non-living purposes.