We found Planet B. What does this mean for design?

Planet B emerges as a practice-based fiction responding ironically to the slogan “There is no Planet B.” The project speculates on the discovery of an alternate planet and the task of replicating Planet A under the principle “if it looks the same, it is the same.” Through absurd protocols for selecting the perfect rock, flower, and stick, the experience enacted a satire of technoscientific control. Developed within the School of Materialist Research’s exploration of Nature and Artifice, it asks: what sensory, political, and aesthetic implications would the discovery of a Planet B bring to the design practice? Children spontaneously took over the installation, turning the stage into a space for free play, revealing an ecology of gestures beyond our initial intention. Planet B reflects how design can host open-ended processes, proposing irony, attentiveness, and affective responsiveness as modes of engaging with planetary fragility and the paradox of fabricating the natural.