Rohan Kakad

'Breathing Games' is a series of high-stake breathing apparatus designed by Rohan Kakad to explore contemporary questions around resource distribution in closed-system environments.

Privatisation and overexploitation of resources are having widespread effects on the Planet. 

Humans are physically and mentally unable to cope with the scale of Earth as a system. 

Rohan has designed a functioning, adaptable, hygienic, multi-player system which enables participants to consume, store, steal or share resources from each other.

In this system, the air is commodified and competed over as if it were a resource in a free market economy. It is a semi-scientific experiment with broader implications and the capability to catalyse new understandings of resource consumption and distribution.

“This system of shared resources makes for a very useful, interesting and tangible system for cooperative behaviour, especially for limited resources … a lot of times [a social science experiment] is not that convincing for people … what your device can clearly do, is it can put people in a situation where they actually have to care about how much resources they get.”

Dr Bahador Bahrami

Professor of Social Neuroscience

Director of Crowd Cognition Lab

“You have designed is a 'public goods game' using air which is a really novel currency, so there is something really interesting about this.”

Professor Nichola Raihani

Evolution and Behaviour expert

Author or ‘The Social Instinct’

Rohan Kakad is a multidisciplinary designer with experience in graphic, architectural, industrial and service design. 

Before joining the Royal College of Art, he worked as an architectural designer for an award-winning, sustainable architecture, master planning and urban design practice in Southwark, London.

Rohan held an art scholarship during his education and has produced and sold many artworks, including a commissioned piece for Sir Paul Smith.

He is also a member and ambassador of the British Sauna Society and hopes to help cultivate a socio-economic sauna culture in London using design as a tool.