The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
Safe room chic
Making your ‘mamad’ safe, comfortable, and beautiful
The “just in case” warnings from the Justice Ministry’s Emergency Department to prepare for a big war are terrifying. Every day advisories come from one source or another, reminding Israelis to reevaluate their emergency plans, stockpile food and water, prepare for several days of nationwide blackout, and be ready to enter safe rooms for 72 hours, possibly more. The Israeli population has been living with wars since its birth – a way of life that influences Israeli home design.
I set out to find out more about safe rooms and shelters, mining the expertise of English-speaking designers, contractors, and safe-room special advisers. If you are designing or renovating a safe space in Israel, where do you start? And how do you make the inside of your safe room as safe as possible – and pleasant and comfortable as well?
“It all starts with a plan,” explains interior designer Tziona Handler of Karnei Shomron, who works at Handler Projects along with her husband, civil engineer Menachem Handler. Together, they plan, create, and renovate public and private shelters for clients who, even prior to Oct. 7, have been adapting their homes to the realities of war.
Menachem says the rules have changed vastly since the concept of safe rooms was originally introduced in 1951, and have even evolved since Oct. 7. Home Front Command is now able to fast-track permits for safe rooms, and local municipalities can be bypassed, providing the rooms strictly adhere to the specifications set out by the Home Front Command.
Safe rooms started out as shared communal shelters, goto places when nascent Israel was being threatened during times of war. They were supposed to be installed every few blocks, allowing easy access for anyone walking in the street and for those living in the neighborhood. Although these public shelters have electricity, toilets, and running water, they can be challenging to access in the moment and complicated for neighbors to share. They were eventually turned into storage facilities for privately owned possessions or Pilates studios, karate dojos, or even synagogues.
Many families found they just couldn’t run down the block in the middle of the night with babies and children in tow, so according to Home Front Command, rules were revised so that every apartment building constructed between 1972-1992 had to contain a public shelter, called a mamad. Once again, many residents began illegally using the shelters for storage, creating access problems.
After the first Gulf War in 1992, Home Front Command decided that the public didn’t need a long-term place to shelter but rather a sealed space to enter for at least 10 minutes while rockets were being fired.
Today, all apartments and private houses are built to include a mamad, and the Handlers say that many owners of homes originally built without shelters are adding on rooms or reinforcing existing ones to meet the new requirements.
Irit Shor, an architect, interior designer, and safe room special adviser from Modi’in, says that when planning a safe room, homeowners should keep in mind that it can’t be changed around with the same facility as other rooms in the house. It can’t be enlarged in tandem with a growing family
because it is a steel and cement cube that cannot be drilled into once the cement is poured. Therefore, pipelines for electrical and communications wires, entry and exit points for air circulation and air-conditioning, and electrical sockets and other elements must all be included in the plan beforehand.
“I recommend that clients plan to place as many electrical outlets as possible,” explains Tziona Handler, in case “a client decides to change the furniture plan that we decide upon initially.”
“Each mamad must have a blast door and a blast window that meet the constantly changing specifications of Home Front Command – it changes with every war,” says Shor.
“The window doesn’t have to be along an exterior wall – it can lead from one room to another. In new construction, it is best to build the safe room on the bottom floor, so if the house falls down the mamad will remain standing. The floor, ceiling, and walls must be steel and cement. If you have a second floor above the mamad, it should be reinforced on three walls as well.”
Safe rooms cannot contain anything that could compromise the integrity of the cement and steel, according to Oren Jackson, CEO of Jaxon Construction, Supervision and Management, who was working on a project in the Samaria when the war forced him to stall.
“Because of the year the house was built, the homeowners didn’t have to actually build a mamad,” he recalls, but “They had an old ventilation system, too small by today’s standards. Today’s mamads have insulation systems. After October 7, we submitted a set of plans to the Home Front Command to HAGA [Hagana Ezrahit, the Civil Defense Organization]. The homeowners decided to upgrade their shelter to current standards.”
Jackson’s biggest recommendation is that homeowners engage a structural engineer to ensure that the specifications are correct and that they conform with the existing construction.
He says there are companies offering prefabricated shelters that can be added on to a house, but it is essential that they are placed on cement foundations.
According to Home Front Command, the technical specifications for a safe room are that the area (within the walls) of the room must be at least 9 sq. m. In each protected room, a sealed blast door and window, electrical outlets, and communication outlets for phones and television must be planned and installed, along with flooring and wall reinforcements. Since 2002, pipelines for the passage of infrastructure such as air conditioning have been mandatory; and since May 2010, a ventilation and filtration system are mandatory in new construction.
Shor predicts that post-Operation Swords of Iron protocols will include changes in the steel doors to make them more resistant to explosives and will require locks on the inside to ensure that the rooms are terrorist-proof, as well as bullet-proof.
She says that drywall cladding can be added inside the cement wall to make decorating, shelving, and painting easier, and that any kind of flooring can be laid over the cement.
The mamad door should always close securely from the outside, with the floor inside being 2 cm. higher than outside the room. While the door can measure as little as 70 cm. across, Shor suggests that 80 cm. allows for easier access. She also says that testing for radon is mandatory in new mamad rooms.
Home Front Command warns against hanging mirrors or ceramics on the walls, heavy lampshades on the ceiling, and heavy items on the wall. While a TV connection is required in the safe room, the television set cannot be hung directly on cement. To hang anything in a mamad, one must install drywall cladding, and even then it is not advisable to hang anything heavy in this room.
The Handler team explains that one of the projects they worked on required a niche – a cement wall to shield the steel door of the mamad room because of the proximity of a window directly opposite the door. Tziona adds that a regular interior wooden door can be built inside the mamad for everyday use, so unless there is an alert, the steel door, which always opens to the outside of the room, doesn’t need to be used. “WHEN I had to install the mamad door, it altered the arrangement and decor of my hallway. In a moment of frustration, I decided to transform the door into a piece of art,” explains designer Sura Shachnovitz, whose company ReSpace helps clients utilize the power of what they already own, to create functional and efficient spaces. She painted a mural on the door, turning “silent protest into a political statement piece.”
Shachnovitz’s mamad is both her office and a guest room, so she worked to make the space versatile, efficient, and welcoming.
Because space is at a premium in Israel, mamad rooms frequently double as guest rooms, playrooms, offices, and even bedrooms, leaving one room in the apartment with just one window and a heavy blast door, challenging but not impossible to make both functional and attractive.
Shachnovitz started with a practical solution from IKEA – the Lycksele Lovas pull-out couch.
“At only 140x190 [cm.] when open, it provides a place to relax, do research, and read my books, plus a cozy spot for guests to sleep. On top of my bookcase, repurposed from another place I lived, I created a mini ‘cupboard area,’ with water and some canned goods. As the key to a functional mamad is preparedness, I keep a bag of blankets ready near the door.”
The mamad, now a harmonious blend of workspace and guest quarters, is a testament to her overall design philosophy that even the most unconventional spaces can be transformed into aesthetically pleasing and purposeful rooms.
MALLORY SEREBRIN of Mallory Living Design and director at The Design Hub, based in Jerusalem, says that every mamad should have a bed and a good-sized closet with a door – to store all the things that you need “just in case” – food, bottles of water, medicine, extra clothing, and a drawer just for games.
She keeps an extra computer, an iPad, charging cords, blankets, a battery-operated fan, and an emergency light combination in her mamad. She keeps two comfortable folding chairs in the closet – and a pail with a lid to be used as a toilet, along with supermarket trash bags, wipes, and toilet paper.“You don’t need to see it,” she adds. “Just make it look like a nice bedroom or office.”
Lacking a locking steel door, her son made a rig to lock the door out of a 2x4 piece of wood.
Serebrin recalls, “The last time we had a siren in Jerusalem, I was resting and I realized I couldn’t see my phone because I didn‘t have my reading glasses with me.” A spare pair is now tucked away in her closet, along with earphones, a transistor radio, and loads of fresh batteries.
She suggests painting mamad rooms in calm, restful colors, such as light blues or pale yellows, and using bedding that makes you feel happy.
“Keep items well organized in the cupboards and drawers,” she says. “And stock them with comfort items – a pair of shoes, jackets, an extra blanky or teddy bear for younger children.”
CANDICE SLOWIK PERLIN of Lexington Design in Herzliya advises not to shy away from bold exciting colors, despite the small size of the mamad. One of her mamad designs features a teal accent wall, a navy couch, two neutral carpets, and beige poufs, as well as a floor-to-ceiling closet. Plants adorn the window sill on the outside, as well as on the inside, dressing the room up for its non-emergency use. Warm lighting and rug-over-rug – a trendy way of enhancing the floor – make the TV viewing area cozy and comfortable.
Perlin recommends the company Funky Door for decals for the steel door and walls. One of the mamads she designed has a large black-and-white New York cityscape on the inside of the door that, when left open, spills into the next room, giving it a cool urban look. She warns that if you don’t get it right, stickers can look kitschy.
“One of my pet peeves as a designer is when someone says, it’s just a mamad,” Perlin says. “A mamad room, especially, should feel nice and warm so you don’t feel like you’re coming to a scary space.”
Daniella Jaeger dubbed one of the Modi’in mamad rooms she designed “The Wonderland Room.” Doubling as a young girl’s bedroom, the room has a wall mural in pink with green hills, the bedspread is multicolored, and a play teepee, bookshelves, and a large paper globe light fixture add the finishing touches.
“It turned the sterile boxy mamad into a fantastical wonderland for a young girl,” she explains.
“I wanted the room to feel like an immersive magical wonderland and to bring curvature to the boxy space, to soften it. Two points of inspiration were the vintage fairytale-like sheets you see on the bed, and the natural surroundings of Modi’in at dawn.”
SANDY BRUDNER of the Jerusalem-based Sandy B Interiors designed a mamad with custom-built bookshelves. A built-in closet blends aesthetics with practicality, and an accent wall papered in blue creates a focal point. A mini fridge and television set and a dedicated workspace add to the convenience.
Another mamad designed by Sandy B combines an inviting guest room and an efficient workspace. It features a hi-riser bed that transforms from a comfortable seating area into sleeping accommodations for two, for space-saving, functionality, and comfort. The room is styled with wallpaper and custom window treatments.
Tel Aviv’s Laurence Sevy of Quiet-ly.com designed a mamad/bedroom for a two-year-old with a canopied crib that converts into a play nook for when the child is old enough to sleep in a big-girl bed. Area rugs and well-stocked magazine racks make the room comfortable for the whole family during stressful times.
All in all, a well-designed mamad can work wonders.