DINA EL KHACHAB AND HEDAYAT ISLAM   1من اصل3

FOR EKLEGO DESIGN
Like many other architects and L designers, we started out doing freelance
interior design, which is great but we really wanted the chance to actually
build something. We agreed on the basics, that intelligent design can
improve lives and that working as a team made us stronger than acting on
our own. So in 2000 we opened an office and called it eklego design.
Eklego means ‘I choose but it’s also the root of ‘eclectic’, which essentially
means unusual or unconventional.
While working on the early projects we explored our territory – Cairo with
its architectural and artisanal traditions, the aesthetics of the desert, the
elegance of objects and buildings from Egypt’s deep past. We met
outstanding craftsmen and suppliers whose work and materials informed
our designs. We learned a lot from these collaborations and got excited
about what we could do by integrating all these talents and sources. At the
end of 2005 we opened our first showroom selling the furnishings born
from this creative process.
The retail and design consultancy aspects of our work interacted and
enriched one another. Eklego became known as a firm that ‘retails interior
design’ but that was only part of it. Heba El- Gabaly , a business strategist
who joined as third partner, and several key projects helped turn our
boutique design office into an architectural and interior design atelier on a
larger scale. The first architectural commission came in 2008. SODIC, a
young and fast-growing real estate development firm asked us to design and
build its sales center on the Cairo-Alexandria Road as part of its re-branding
drive. We had a short deadline but a great team, beginning with our partner,
KCRG (Egypt) who coordinated the project.