Growing smarter,
closer, and cleaner
A self-contained hydroponic unit designed and manufactured by ZERO. This module is a compact expression of our Future Farming Platform, integrating every subsystem required for soilless plant growth into a single, autonomous object.
Conventional agriculture is facing structural limits
The global population is projected to reach 9,7 billion by 2050. Agriculture already accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals. A third of arable land has been lost in 40 years. Approximately one-third of fruit and vegetable production is discarded during transport.
These converging pressures demand a fundamental rethinking of how and where food is produced. The module you are looking at is one tangible answer.
by agriculture
lost in 40 yrs
in transport
Every component has a purpose. Nothing is decorative.
Four vertical cultivation columns rotate around a central LED light tube. Each plant sits on a proprietary plug holder engineered to support growth, enable root development, and optimise nutrient absorption. The slow rotation ensures every plant receives uniform light exposure.
Up to 95% less water.
See the numbers.
Conventional agriculture uses between 200 and 300 litres of water to produce a single kilogram of lettuce in open fields. ZERO's closed-loop hydroponic system recirculates the nutrient solution, consuming as little as 10–15 litres per kilogram. Adjust the slider to explore the impact at different production scales.
Not just a growing system, but an active contributor to indoor air quality
Collaborating with nature, not extracting from it
ZERO's technology sits at the frontier of what leading research institutions call Nature Co-Design: an emerging paradigm that integrates biology with advanced engineering, computation, and AI. Controlled Environment Agriculture is a key pillar of this vision, enabling a regenerative model where resources are cycled efficiently, waste is minimised, and production adapts intelligently to the needs of both plants and people.
The future of farming is not just about growing more. It is about growing smarter, closer, and cleaner.
This module is not an idyll of technology. It is a working fragment of a future where satellite positioning systems dialogue with ancestral knowledge, where artificial intelligence and traditional experience reciprocally shape one another, where the biopolitics of land are continuously reconfigured across the phases of human history.
"Dash" by Cao Fei
Fondazione Prada, Milano
This ZERO cultivation module is exhibited as part of "Dash", a multimedia project by Chinese artist Cao Fei exploring the technological revolution in global agriculture and its intrinsic contradictions: the tensions between efficiency and tradition, algorithmic intelligence and ancestral knowledge, rural erosion and urban transformation.
ZERO's module stands within this narrative as a tangible artefact of contemporary agriculture: an object where engineering precision, biological intelligence, and computational control converge.