A Desert Solar Neighborhood in Sede Boker, Israel

The fact that Israel is a very sunny country would make one expect to find many solar buildings and solar neighborhoods in it. Surprisingly though, these practically do not exist: the number of solar buildings in Israel is small, and the first solar neighborhood has been built in this country. In general, the move towards “solar” is slow at the most. An attempt was made by the Israeli Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Energy to promote solar neighborhood development, and indeed one such neighborhood was planned and designed through an open competition in Mitzpe-Ramon (Rahamimoff 1984), but the winning entry has not been built up to date, mostly due to lack of resources. The reasons for this lack of solar and energy efficient designs are mostly the insufficient awareness (if it at all exists) of designers and consumers to the solar design potential on one hand, and the practical non-existence of neighborhoods whose zoning takes advantage of solar rights, solar access and orientation. This, coupled with the generally small size of building lots, makes it very difficult to build solar houses in Israel.