My Journey

I am Hiba Abu-Heija, a 33-year-old, British-Jordanian architect and Interior Designer. I was born in the United Kingdom in 1987,  I am an only girl with two younger brothers, Ahmad and Osama. In the UK my father studied and practiced medicine, and my mother was studying fashion design herself.  We went back to Jordan for my middle school years, after which we moved one more time to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where I studied and graduated from high school. In high school my passion began for psychology and sociology subjects, studying human behavior, its origins, development and institutions. At university, this passion grew through studying architecture and the creation of human-designed environments in Amman’s Jordan University.

As an Architectural undergraduate, I assisted in teaching design studios and various other courses to architecture students alongside my professors. After graduation, I got married to my soulmate Hassan, who himself was building an electrical Engineering business in Muscat of which he is today the operative director of. That’s when I moved to Oman and  co-founded our own little family, with Ali our eldest, and the Twins Saeed and Bissan.

In Muscat I landed a job in The Scientific College of Design, an inventive college, dedicated to teaching creative sectors; Fine arts, Interior, Graphic and Fashion design. After a couple of years teaching there, I decided to peruse a master’s degree in Interior Design at Hertfordshire University in London, which I completed in 2017. Since then I have directed numerous interior design studios at The Scientific College of Design. I have privately consulted an assortment of projects focused on interior design in both Oman and Jordan, and alongside have conducted Design and décor workshops teaching interior design and various styling tips to people interested in Interior design but belong to different educational backgrounds than the creative sectors.

The reason why I studied architecture in the first place is its great association with interior design and the fact that the university that I really wanted to study in didn’t offer an interior design program at the time, so I settled for Architecture. Since day one in my Architecture Bachelors, all I was fascinated with were the interior spaces created by architectural juxtapositions and their huge psychological impact on human behavior. Therefore, I couldn’t just stop there I had to continue my educational journey at London’s Hertfordshire University where I got my Masters’ degree in Interior Design.  

The inspiration behind my work is usually the people inhabiting those space I am designing. After all they are the ones that will have to live there or work there. Hence, I usually try to get as much information on their likes, dislikes, daily rituals and so on, and then translate all into relevant interior design elements. A more occupant cantered approach rather than trend based.