HDD Interiors’ founders and co-owners, Jean Habis (left) and Elie Dib.

The plush interior perspective for luxury jeweller Maria Gaspari.

Chili’s restaurant at The Mall of the Emirates.

Ounass at the Madinat Jumeirah.

Black Canyon restaurant at Dubai Festival City.

An exhibition stand for Al Barari.

Romanos Macaroni Grill at Dubai Festival City.

The Lancaster cosmetics counter in Debenhams, Mall of the Emirates.

Damas Watches outlet at Dubai Festival City.

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Design duo

Lebanese-born Elie Dib and Jean Habis decided to fuse their respective expertise in architecture and interior design and create HDD Interiors. Focusing predominantly on retail and hospitality design the company now counts Chanel, Nestle and Damas among its core clientele. CID speaks to co-owner Jean Habis about the challenges and triumphs of launching and running a design firm in Dubai.

What is your background in commercial interior design?
Elie's academic degree was in architecture whereas my degree was in interior architecture with a year studying environmental design. After that finished I then did my Masters in Design in Sydney, Australia, which encompassed every type of design.

I decided to move to Dubai just over ten years ago and worked in the exhibition industry for six years executing the design of exhibition stands and showroom interiors.

Why did you decide to leave exhibitions and move into more mainstream interior design?

I felt like the time was right to handle my own business. I had involvement with a lot of clients, my face was very familiar in the industry. I had various options, and the best one was joining forces with Elie. Our personalities clicked as soon as we met and our respective talents and expertise complement each other.

How did you meet each other?

We were introduced by a mutual friend, literally hours after I first arrived in Dubai and obviously we had no idea that one day we would own a company together. We have a common history and the partnership works very well.

What does HDD do?

We now have three prongs to the company: Interiors, Exhibitions and Point of sale promotional stands for cosmetics.

We have Chanel as our main client ithis area and we do all of its animations for campaigns. Our clients for exhibitions include Nestle, Data Scope and Al Barari among others.

And what interior design projects have you been involved in?

With interior design we are very prolific in two main areas: restaurants and jewellery shops. We are the official design consultants for Damas and for the Bin Lahej Hospitality Group who has numerous brands including Chili's; Macaroni Grill; Pizza Company; Bread Talk and Cantina Laredo.

We also do shops and offices. To be honest, I am not particularly interested in doing residential projects for individual clients as it is very personal, we much prefer commercial interior design.

What are you currently working on?

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