INDUSTRIAL DESIGN SPOTLIGHT: MASSOUD HASSANI

Engineers change the way our world works in many different ways. Let’s take a step back from the “end of the year” buzz and give ourselves a chance to (re)discover a key actor of the sector.

Massoud Hassani is a 30-year-old promising creator, willing to combine engineering skills and knowledge with society’s needs. His name may sound familiar as we have already talked about his life-changing project, the Mine Kafon – Deminer (2012).

Massoud grew up in Qasaba, Kabul, where his family moved when he was 5. The several wars going on impacted his daily life and surely shaped his personality in a way that led him to coose a path guided by a sense of devotion to others.

Massoud Hassani moved to Holland in 1998 in search of a better life and decided to become a product designer, an obvious choice after working as a car mechanic in Kabul.

Massoud believes that engineering and design could save the world. Indeed, these experiences as much as the toys he cherished during childhood, were his first source of inspiration for his 2011 graduation project for the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven. This led him to designing the Mine Kafon, a 20-times bigger duplicate of his favorite toys, based on solar / wind-power and including a GPS.

For the project, he received the support of over 4000 people and raised a total of 100,000 pounds in order to take Mine Kafon to the next level.

Mine Kafon has become part of the collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Hassani had an exhibit at this renowned museum until March 2013.

2013 has been a rich year for Massoud with large media coverage (CNN, BBC, TIME, New York Times, DW, Der Spigel, Die Zeit, Le Monde, Mail Online, The Guardian, WiRed, Financial Times, Forbes etc.), a TEDx lecture, prizes and several exhibitions.

Engineering, coupled with design skills, provides, once more, meaningful solutions for the general public.

Building a bridge between two cultures with engineering knowledge: a world-changing approach.