Coccinelle: The DJ Booth Studio Keeping Lebanon's Dancefloors Alive

Architecture has long been the invisible backbone of nightlife in the Middle East and North Africa. From iconic industrial rooftops to brutalist subterranean sanctuaries, spatial design in cities like Beirut defines how music is experienced, shaping acoustic flow, lighting dynamics, and crowd energy. Yet despite the region’s sophisticated architectural heritage and high-end clubbing ecosystem, the focal point of the dancefloor, which is the DJ booth, has historically been treated as a functional afterthought. Venues and festival organisers across the MENA region have routinely relied on temporary, makeshift tables that struggle with cable management and equipment stability, or spent heavily to import specialised audio furniture from overseas.

Beirut-based design and fabrication studio Coccinelle Studio Sonore is changing that dynamic by merging music culture directly with architectural detail. Founded by DJ and designer Rayan Haddad, the homegrown studio bridges the gap between spatial aesthetic and performance utility. Haddad recognised that while venue interiors were receiving meticulous design treatments, the DJ console remained an awkward, unconsidered junction of loose wires and unstable surfaces. Coccinelle Studio Sonore addresses this disconnect by crafting bespoke DJ booths, vinyl storage solutions, and listening stations that treat the booth as an intentional architectural centrepiece rather than utility hardware.

Central to the studio's ethos is a commitment to localised production. Every piece is designed and manufactured in Lebanon, using local materials, precision metalwork, and 3D-printed components. This approach eliminates the high cost and logistical delays of importing foreign rigs while enabling rapid, site-specific fabrication. A prime example was outfitting the entire Record Corner at Aegis Festival 2026 in under a month, a project that incorporated custom listening stations, modular vinyl crates, and collaborative builds with local partners and record stores including Buzz Cut, Beirut Vinyl Records, and Abandoned Records.

By engineering booths with integrated cable routing, ergonomic storage, and reliable structural balance, Coccinelle Studio Sonore eliminates visual chaos and technical friction for performing artists. Through thoughtful proportions and local craftsmanship, Haddad is asserting that the engine room of the dance floor can be as locally crafted, grounded, and structurally deliberate as the venue around it.

At Aegis Festival 2026, we caught up with Rayan Haddad, the mastermind behind Coccinelle Studio Sonore, to unpack the genesis of the project and the inner workings of bringing these bespoke DJ booths to life.