In the search for comfort, convenience, and material wealth, we have sacrificed the environment by exhausting the capacity of nature's systems to sustain us. With more than 40% of the earth's land surface, 60% of Israel's land area and most developing nations constituting arid or semi-arid regions, along with burgeoning populations and desertification it is essential to find realistic solutions to our environmental problems which threaten our future existence.

As our cities get more and more congested and the infrastructure overloaded, Israel's Negev desert, with its beautiful wide, open spaces, is our last frontier. How are we going to develop the Negev? Will we continue to use present day conventional patterns of design with their destructive environmental impact, or will we find a different pattern that will cherish our landscapes, by integrating and building using designs and systems that minimize resource consumption?