Mine Kafon: Wind-Propelled Bamboo Sphere Designed to Clear Landmines

Massoud Hassani's Mine Kafon is a wind-propelled sphere made from <a title="Massoud Hassani's Bamboo Rolling Spheres Clearing Landmines with Wind Power" href="http://inhabitat.com/bamboo-wing-is-a-sculptural-vietnamese-restaurant-immersed-in-water/" target="_blank">bamboo</a> and biodegradable plastic that can be used to clear landmines. When designer <a title="Massoud Hassani's Bamboo Rolling Spheres Clearing Landmines with Wind Power" href="http://massoudhassani.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Massoud Hassani</a> was growing up in <a title="Massoud Hassani's Bamboo Rolling Spheres Clearing Landmines with Wind Power" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabul" target="_blank">Kabul</a>, Afghanistan, there were several wars raging on nearby. He and his brother would play on the deserted fields making their own rolling toys with scarp materials but sometimes the objects would roll dangerously close to the landmines. This intense childhood experience inspired Hassani's design work, and the Mine Kafon is the result. This lifesaving design has been shortlisted as a finalist in for the <a href="http://designtoimprovelife.dk/mine-kafon/">2013 INDEX: Award</a>.

The toys Massoud designed with his brother Mahmud were made of all sorts of different found materials and shape, but they were all powered by the dessert’s string winds.

For his final project at Design Academy of Eindhoven, Massoud went back to his childhood area and remade the toys again.

But one toy in particular was 20 times bigger, heavier and stronger, and he made it from renewable bamboo and biodegradable plastic.

Powered by the wind, The Mine Kafon will roll detonating the bombs in the same Afghan areas and it could be followed through on the website eventually showing the safest paths to walk on and land mines destroyed by -- thanks to an integrated GPS chip --.

Afghanistan is said to still have 10 million land mines but the truth is, there are far more and every destroyed land mine means a saved life.

Massoud’s work will be exhibited at New York’s MOMA and Paris’ Gallery Slott early next year, and he is currently looking for collaborative partners and donations to helping saving people’s lives. Please help.