At 14, Massoud Hassani’s mother sent him away with smugglers to get him out of Afghanistan. He eventually made his way to the Netherlands where he discovered a talent for art and design.
Now 25, he’s a student at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, an interdisciplinary art, architecture and design institute. There, Massoud devised an innovative approach to one of the biggest challenges facing the country he left 9 years ago: land mines.
Inspired by the wind-driven toys he made as a child in the deserts around Kabul, Mine Kafon blows across the land seeking to explode hidden land mines. It’s easy to make with metal and plastic and a GPS chip tracks its movements. With an estimated 10 million land mines buried in Afghanistan, it’s a design that locals can use to save lives.
True to its unique inspiration, Mine Kafon is being tested by the Dutch Military and on view at a Museum of Modern Art exhibition in New York City this month. Massoud is currently raising funds on Kickstarter to improve the design.