Once reserved for clinical environments, hyperbaric oxygen therapy has undergone a remarkable transformation. Today, it exists at the crossroads of medicine, longevity, and wellbeing, embraced by elite sports teams, high-performance recovery centers, forward-thinking clinics, and a new generation of wellness spaces where restoration is approached with both scientific precision and aesthetic care. Few people have done more to shape that transformation than Tolga Kabak.
As CTO and co-founder of HPO.TECH, the Istanbul-based company behind some of the world’s most advanced pressure systems for hyperbaric medicine and altitude physiology, Tolga Kabak has helped reimagine what hyperbaric technology can be. HPO.TECH’s hyperbaric chambers are immersive environments: spaces designed to heal, to calm, reassure, and elevate the entire therapeutic experience. They are beautiful objects that have an almost artistic installation feel when seen in a beautiful spa.
With a background in mechanical engineering from Trakya University and a master’s degree focused on hyperbaric oxygen chambers, Kabak built his expertise within the field before recognizing a problem that others seemed willing to overlook. The science was evolving, but the design was not. Hyperbaric chambers remained functional, safe and technically sound, yet visually intimidating and emotionally cold. They had no soul and inspired no one.
Above: Inside the ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber, users are breathing pure oxygen on demand through the BIBS mask with CO2 exhaust.
When Engineering Meets Design Thinking
At the heart of HPO.TECH’s design philosophy lies a simple idea: life-enhancing technology should not feel frightening to the people who use it. Traditionally, hyperbaric chambers have been treated as purely utilitarian pressure vessels, with engineering demands naturally taking precedence over everything else.
For Kabak, that was only part of the story. If a person spends extended periods in one of these spaces, the chamber must also be understood in architectural and psychological terms. It must feel open. Comfortable. Intuitive. Even beautiful. That shift in perspective helped define a new design language for the field.
Rather than viewing the chamber as a sealed machine, Kabak and his team approached it as an environment under pressure, where light, transparency, spatial perception, materiality and emotional ease matter just as much as mechanical performance. The result is a body of work that retains rigorous engineering standards, including worldwide certification, while introducing something unexpectedly rare in hyperbaric medicine: elegance.
Above: A collection of ZEUGMA hyperbaric chambers inside the HPO.TECH showroom in Istanbul, Turkey.
This was the thinking that gave rise to the ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber, a design that would go on to become one of the most widely copied in the world. Its significance lies not only in its technical sophistication, but in the fact that it brought a new level of refinement to the category. Under Kabak’s direction, the chamber became something more aligned with the contemporary wellness world: restorative, polished, and deeply considered. In doing so, it helped hyperbaric oxygen therapy move further into the mainstream.
The Luxury Of Feeling At Ease Inside A Hyperbaric Chamber
For many first-time users, entering a hyperbaric chamber can feel daunting. Claustrophobia, anxiety and uncertainty are common reactions, especially when the surrounding design language is cold or overtly medical. HPO.TECH’s response has been to treat emotional comfort as an essential part of performance.
Its chambers are defined by spacious interior volumes, panoramic observation windows, ergonomic seating and reclining options, and a visual softness that is unusual in this category. Everything is designed to create a sense of openness and reassurance. The effect is less like entering a machine and more like stepping into a carefully imagined capsule for recovery.
In luxury wellness, the experience surrounding the treatment is never secondary to the treatment itself. It shapes the body’s willingness to relax, the mind’s willingness to trust, and ultimately the user’s relationship with the therapy. Tolga Kabak seems to understand this instinctively. His chambers are engineered for safety and efficacy, but also for emotional reception. They are designed to reduce fear and replace it with curiosity.
Above: Celebrity biohacker Bryan Johnson next to his ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber inside his private home gym. Click to read more about Bryan Johnson’s results with the ZEUGMA.
That is why many celebrities and high-profile personalities, including Bryan Johnson, have already chosen a ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber for personal use.
Transparency As A Design Signature
One of HPO.TECH’s most distinctive innovations lies in its use of transparency. Its chambers are among the most visually open in the field, featuring unusually large windows, multiple viewing configurations and a level of design freedom rarely seen in pressure systems operating safely at up to 2.4 ATA. In hyperbaric engineering, every opening affects structural performance, and larger transparent surfaces introduce significant technical challenges.
Above: Jordan Mulligan from the Mulligan Brothers inside his ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber inside his private video studio. See the Mulligan Brothers x HPO.TECH documentary about Dr. Joseph Dituri on YouTube.
To make this possible, HPO.TECH undertook complex engineering across several disciplines, from PMMA and acrylic material development to window flange and frame design, stress distribution analysis and fatigue resistance under repeated pressure cycles. In most conventional chambers, windows remain small because scaling them up becomes exponentially more difficult.
Instead of treating visibility as a minor feature added after the fact, Tolga Kabak designed the entire chamber around transparency as a central idea. The resulting spaces feel lighter, calmer and more generous, all while maintaining the exacting standards required of a highly specialized pressure vessel.
Above: The TAMPA Multibaric chamber can switch from hyperbaric mode (2.4 ATA) for HBOT to hypobaric mode (0.356 ATM) for altitude training at the touch of a button.
Beyond Therapy, Towards Human Potential
HPO.TECH’s systems that combine hyperbaric oxygen therapy with hypobaric altitude simulation within a single platform create new possibilities in sports performance, neurological recovery, anti-ageing research and human physiology. Its TAMPA project reflects that direction, opening the door to multi-baric environments that are as relevant to cutting-edge scientific exploration as they are to the next chapter of wellness.
This work is already part of highly advanced research into longevity and age reversal. Using HPO.TECH technology, Joseph Dituri and Arizona State University’s Healthspan team gained international attention as semifinalists in the $101 million XPRIZE competition, selected from 765 teams worldwide, for research connected to reversing ageing.
Hyperbaric systems are no longer confined to the role of treatment devices alone. Increasingly, they are becoming sophisticated research platforms and carefully designed human environments, capable of supporting some of the most exciting developments in modern medicine and wellbeing.
By bringing together engineering discipline, design thinking and a genuine sensitivity to human experience, Kabak has helped shape a new vision of what recovery can look and feel like. One where safety and science remain paramount, and where beauty, openness and emotional ease are part of the therapy itself.
To find out more about HPO.TECH and the ZEUGMA hyperbaric chamber, visit the links below:
Osmangazi, Battalgazi Cd. No:27
34887 Sancaktepe’
Istanbul
Turkey
Web: hpotech.com
Tel: +1 (315) 512-1112 (Alexandru Harbuzaru, BDO)
Email: office@hpotech.com