As the son of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Majed Abuseif grew up in poverty where education was an unaffordable luxury. For the young Majed there was no play time with friends when the only way to survive was to work. From the age of 6 Majed was working on construction sites and it was here that he first saw the difference an education could make when the engineers would visit the site and were treated like royalty.
Through sheer determination and just a little bit of luck Majed was able to gain a degree in Architecture in Jordan, but when the Global Financial Crisis hit in the early part of this century Majed’s employer went bankrupt and he lost his job. With no one able to offer him any employment Majed decided to launch his own business and with his experience in architecture, landscaping and urban design the venture ultimately led to many major town planning assignments in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Qatar and the UAE.
Since initially enrolling for his Masters in Architecture and now as a PhD student at Griffith University, Majed has won no less than 4 awards for architecture and design and achieved the highest GPA in the history of his college. But it’s his pet project outside of his PhD that excites Majed more than anything else. The Smart Planter Box will enable green spaces to flourish anywhere in the urbanised world, regardless of environmental conditions with a sophisticated system designed to calculate everything a plant needs to grow and thrive in any environment.