For Ofra and David Faiman, their home near Beersheba is an expression of their life's work: for her it's the theater built into the center of the house, and for him it's the elements of construction that have been included to maximize the use of solar energy, a subject on which he is considered a world expert. Ofra is an actress, director and drama teacher who often performs her one-woman shows in the in-home theater; David is an emeritus professor of physics at Ben-Gurion University and was director of the National Solar Energy Center. Although officially retired, David says he is still working 24 hours a day, researching large-scale solar energy for power and developing appropriate storage means to get it into the electric grid more efficiently. The house was built in 1990-91 in Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Sde Boker. It's an academic campus and an educational community with several institutions, including the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research that David Faiman helped establish in 1974. The Faimans built the house through the “Build Your Own Home” scheme, and it is defined as a passive solar house where all heating and cooling needs are taken care of by the sun. Even in the scorching Negev of August, no air conditioners are needed. “With the design of the house and the use of insulation, hot air and uninvited solar radiation cannot enter,” he explains. The house has no windows to the east or west, a fact which he admits would be more difficult to achieve in Tel Aviv. Creative ideas, including rotating vertical panels at the windows, help to control temperature. One face of the panels is black, and when they face out in winter the sun heats them up, storing the heat in the special surface. Later in the day they are rotated so the hot face turns inside, warming the room. The other insulated side keeps the heat from escaping. “They keep the house warm all night long,” he says. In one of the bedrooms, one can see the panels from the inside of the room. The roof was designed in such a way that one day, when electricity- producing panels become less expensive to make and install, they could be added. The water heater has an added mirror so that even when the sun is lower, as in winter, and doesn't hit the solar plate as much as it should, maximum heating is still possible. Ofra is Israeli–born and went to live in London in 1970 to study and work in theater. There she met David, and the couple made aliya in 1973. He is from a well-known English Jewish family – many Brits of a certain age will remember Faiman's Oxford Street fashion store, which belonged to his grandfather Max Faiman. David's other grandfather, Rev. J.K. Goldbloom, was also well-known in the London Jewish community. Pictures of the two grandfathers adorn the “royal box” of the theater, five seats in the gallery above the stage. The abstract, brightly colored wall hanging was acquired in a Moscow market and is very thin, and was thus attached to a carpet to make it easier to display. There are also several other rugs suspended from the walls, which were acquired in Jerusalem. They were used as part of the set for the last performance Ofra did, a play on the life of American poet Emily Dickinson. “I did about 60 performances, and half of them were in the house itself,” she says. The collection of old furniture, whose provenance is mostly the local flea market, is left over from the play. On the wall above the stage is a portrait of her drama teacher, actress Fanny Lubitsch, while at the right one can see a Japanese wedding kimono. The double doors set at a right angle in the middle of the stage can be opened up to make the stage twice as large. Very often, concerts are held in the house and the Faimans make a point of inviting immigrant artists to perform. Ofra is also a member of the Theater of the Negev, and holds international workshops, often using the home theater. “I give courses on how to integrate drama in teaching,” she says. “I'm a great believer in the power of the theater.” The home, which was designed by architects Arieh and Selma Rachaminov, is also a regular house where the Faimans have lived for nearly 30 years, raising their three children. “But no question, the theater is the heart of the home,” says Ofra. “The center of the home is dedicated to creativity and art.”
For this Negev couple, work and home life meld together(photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)