The next exhibition to open at the new Design Museum will explore how ‘designed in California’ expresses a distinctive approach to design and life.
California has always been a place in which it creates tools of personal freedom in a diverse environment from skateboards and iPhones all the way through to LSD blotting paper and political posters.
This exhibition will showcase rare exhibits including hand-drawn sketches of the Apple Macintosh’s icons, concept artwork for Blade Runner, and, on display for the first time in the UK, Waymo’s self-driving car (formerly the Google self-driving car project) to show how ‘Designed in California’ is the new ‘Made in Italy’.
It will be the first display to o examine the state’s current global reach, picking up the story from the mid 1960’s to chart the journey from counterculture to Silicon Valley’s tech culture.
The ambitious exhibition will bring together over 200 objects which includes political posters, personal computers and self-driving cars but also aims to look beyond hardware to explore how user interface designers in the Bay Area are shaping some of our most common daily experiences and expanding what we think of as design.
California: Designing Freedom is split into five different thematic sections to prove that design in California is distinguished by an emphasis on individual freedom and how it has impacted on all of our lives.
California: Designing Freedom will be on display at the Design Museum from the 24th May until the 15th October 2017. For more information and to book tickets visit: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/future-exhibitions/california