This book examines California's enormous impact on contemporary design, from the counterculture of the 1960s to the tech culture of Silicon Valley. On a more expansive level, California: Designing Freedom explores the idea that California has pioneered tools of personal liberation - from LSD to surfboards and iPhones. This ambitious survey brings together political posters and portable devices, but also looks beyond hardware to explore how user interface designers in the San Francisco Bay Area are shaping some of our most common daily experiences. Californian products have influenced contemporary life across the globe to such an extent that in some ways we are all now Californians. Put simply, 'Designed in California' is the new 'Made in Italy'.

Young and innovative, the Beijing-based architectural firm 'MAD' has gained international acclaim. "MAD Dinner" presents the firm's use of high-tech visualisations and imaginary shapes with proposals for the sustainable future of the Chinese city, challenging Chinese approaches to values, culture, and environment. Like a dinner table conversation, this is a collection of ideas and opinions from politics to ecology to fame to the future.The dinner 'guests' are from all levels of Chinese society: a government official, hairdresser, migrant laborers, a doctor, a taxi driver, a developer, brought together to exchange views in an open atmosphere. MAD's work is embedded in a series of extended conversations with international advisors, including the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, British writer Ian Buruma, filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke, and the artist Ai Weiwei. The conversations work in tandem with MAD's proposals on the architect's freedoms and limitations inside China, the world's fastest urbanizing nation.