John King /San Francisco Chronicle
Back when high tech was defined by physical computers and how they functioned, the work took place in straightforward structural shells that spread out across Silicon Valley as the apricot orchards receded.
Now that tech titans view themselves in much grander terms — “By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent,” to quote Mark Zuckerberg — architecture is being wielded as a form of exalted branding. And if the results look better on screens rather than real life, well, isn’t the virtual world the one that really counts?
This is the implicit message of “Building the Future: A Visual History of the Architecture of Silicon Valley,” an exhibition up at the Los Altos History Museum. On one level, it’s an artful display of more than 50 crystalline photographs showing recent campuses and headquarters buildings that...cont.
Steve Jobs Theater on the headquarters campus of Apple in Cupertino, as photographed by Richard Adler in 2019. The image is part of Adler’s “Building the Future: A Visual History of the Architecture of Silicon Valley,” an exhibit at the Los Altos History Museum through Oct. 29.
