Design
From flower to power
What do skateboards and Apple watches have in common? The current exhibition at London’s Design Museum California: Designing Freedom has the answer: they were all conceived in the sunny West Coast state. Yet the show goes beyond merely collecting products linked by proximity, instead it begs the question: did the radical free-wheeling lefties of the 1960s spawn the Silicon Valley start-ups of today? Told through some 300 items from film footage to music, prints, pamphlets, posters and products the exhibition ekes out a narrative that ignores the boxy modernist houses and playful space-age inspired Google architecture for which California is already known. Although the moustachioed long-hairs rocking out at Altamont or erecting a geodesic dome in which to communally subsist in a desert weren’t the same fastidious kids cooped up with their computers, there’s a sense of chaos and an anti-establishment feeling that touches both. The exhibition runs until 15 October; the question of how radical Silicon Valley is will likely linger.