The Water Fractal:
Manifesto


we arrive in Sicily to listen.

listening is how we discover wonder,
                  and trail
listening is how we learn
learning is how we yield.

every drop carries an instruction
we parade around a spectrum of absence,
                  and presence

we follow tiny streams until
it admits it was a river all along

smallest gestures hold the whole
                  A FRACTAL

treat a glass of water
                  as a guest

save a cup,
lose a habit,
make room for new ones.
if one feels prickly,
then go do the next small thing anyway

The Water Fractal gathers what we heard
                  and learned
we offer the knowledge back as design,
as narrative,
as possibility.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

CENTRALE DELL’ACQUA
Piazza Diocleziano 5, Milano
23–26 Gen. 2026

Fri 23/01 10-13 14-19.30
Sat 24/01 10-13 14-19.30
Sun 25/01 10-13 14-19.30
Mon 26/01 14-19.30

97

Designers

16

Projects

1

Exhibition

THE WATER FRACTAL invites visitors to examine how we inhabit and manage water-dependent environments. Our approach began with listening to Sicily, to the people who live there, and to one another. Throughout the semester, every project was informed by extensive research: field stories gathered from the island, narratives from farmers, citizens, and experts, and reflections on the long, complex history of water in the region. Rather than working from a distance, we allowed the context to guide us. Sicily’s wisdom, geological, agricultural, cultural shaped how we framed the problem and how we imagined possible interventions.

The design process also started with ourselves.
Before proposing solutions for others, we practiced awareness of our own water consumption through bodystorming exercises and daily observation. This self-reflection informed the tone of the work: practical, attentive, and conscious of scale. It is this same awareness that we now hope to extend to visitors. The exhibition encourages each person to reflect on their own relationship with water and recognize how individual gestures connect to broader systems.

PRESS KIT

>PROJECTS
>EVENTS

Mattia Addario | Marina Martinez Aires | Francesca Alderisio | Nabila Devonia Alfansi | Maya Alhasan | Nicolas Atelman | Tiffenn Barbè | Marco Bellavite | Ezel Biton | Bilguunzaya Boldbaatar | Elisa Bonaiuti | Lara Bosani | Arianna Bosco | Marta Brighel | Alice Burgess | Josefina Bustos | Lorenzo Cacioli | Wuriandita Wahyumurti Candra | Xuanye Chen | Beatrice Ciavarella | Emanuele Croce | Juan David Salazar Cuellar | Matteo D'Ancona | Andrea D'Ignazi | Anna Maria Dall'Aglio | Camilla Damnotti | Berkay Darcan | Marco Aurelio Delbue | Nicole Andrea Troncoso Delfin | Jingwen Deng | Nicoletta Dodaj | Lara Erdir | Mathilda Faggionato | Anna Dmitrievna Fasolyak | Giorgia Fontana | Mattia Garofalo | Elena Gasparrini | Mehrnaz Gelyani | Emma Gerroni | Myriam Giagnoni | Sara Eva Guarino | Begum Guleryuz | Despoina Hadjiyianni | Agnete Heidensleben | Matteo Impieri | Juwon Kang | Camilla Krossøy | Savie Mathis Lizotte | Yuting Lo | Sofiia Lomkina | Xinzhi Lyu | Ludovica Maccioni | Francesca Maggi | Jean Paul Alcandre Massa | Alessia Menduni | Alessandro Moneta | Beatrice Monti | Hootan Mortazavi | Lilou Rekha | Mouilleron-Becar | Madhuri Muralidharan | Isadora Vicenza Pacini | Alessandro Parente | Riccardo De Pasquale | Sofia Pasculli | Filippo Pavesi | Francesco Pecorari | Greta Piccioli | Lucrezia Polini | Risca Pratita | Aditya Rizki Pratama | Xiaoxuan Ren | Lars Riemann | Shalvi Gurunath Sabnis | Sofia Moncayo Salazar | Giorgia Marissa Serra | Yatin Set | Eichha Singh | Yuan Su | Chendong Sun | Matteo Terraneo | Edoardo Trapani | Helene Netland Unander | Katherine Mercedes Chimoy Vega | Puneetha Veerapaneni | Sara Gravdal Volstad | Zuyi Wang | Hairu Zhai | Shiruo Zhang | Xiangrui Zhou | Alice Zini | Andrea Zorloni | Rongcheng Zou