DAY ZERO, 2046

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Day Zero responds to a near future condition in which water scarcity, privatised control and failing infrastructure reshape everyday life in the UK. The project proposes a world where the existing treatment of water as a paid and managed resource has intensified into a much more extreme system of measurement, pricing and control. Against this, the project imagines a smaller alternative order formed by two young people who leave London and begin living in an abandoned water tower outside the city.

Their world is organised through repeated rituals: collecting water from the air, storing it, testing it with mayflies and sharing it beyond human use. The mayflies become part of an interspecies exchange. They help indicate whether the water is safe, while the nomads return water to them rather than keeping it only for themselves. This creates a small cycle of care between human and more than human life.

Spatially, the project asks how domestic space, clothing and objects might change when water becomes scarce. The water tower becomes a shelter, ritual space and testing ground for a different way of living. For Ficta Ordo, the project explores how a new order can emerge from crisis through care, routine and shared dependency.

Treatment for DAY ZERO

© 2026 Valentin Schmidhuber