The dazzling China Design Now exhibition at the V&A is divided into three parts, each named after a Chinese city: Shenzhen is Frontier City, with a focus on graphic design, Shanghai is Dream City, with fashion to the forefront and Beijing is Future City, with model-sized foretastes of 2008 Olympics buildings. An overall theme of incorporating tradition within the avant-garde provides coherence and the exhibition spaces, with random partitions encouraging visitor dispersal, makes for a comfortable experience.

Shenzhen’s young designers are formulating a ‘new graphic language completely different from the political propaganda of the past’. Chinese written characters are given prominence in the first room, whether framed or projected. The characters He Ping (peace) for instance, solid and wrapped in bandages, or xin (belief) made to appear and disappear in a dot matrix according to the viewing angle, remind the visitor that designer awareness is enshrined in the ideographic language ,especially since Mao Ze Dong introduced education for all Chinese people, not just the elite 15% of the population.

In an extract from feature film Green Tea, continuous changes of focus foreground characters painted on a café window; on the opposite wall in the mesmerising Hidden Depth figures resembling planes, cars and tanks move about a white space to the sound of whirring and clicking. Designed artefacts, from tee shirts to skateboards incorporate ironic Mao era images.

In the Shanghai section the emphasis shifts to the consumer society, featuring the city’s new Xintiandi shopping centre. Objects as diverse as bar stools and counter facades, domestic equipment and dress fashions demonstrate new techniques and materials. The power of film media is apparent here: in a clip from Wong Kar Wei’s In the Mood for Love Maggie Cheung wears the garment that started a bout of ‘Qipao fever’ in the city. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Zhang Ziyi promotes a mobile phone in a TV advert. A cloak made from recycled material under the Wu Yong (Useless) label is similar to one in Jia Zhang Ke’s film of the same name, about the fashion industry in China.

Western influence is most apparent throughout in the Beijing section, where most of the showpieces are the work of overseas architects. Models of Paul Andreu’s new National Theatre and Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest stadium are stationed alongside Pei Zhu‘s Beijing landmark, the Digital Beijing building. Eco-friendliness is emphasised in the National Swimming Centre, which looks as if the bubble-wrap domes of the Eden Project were compressed in to a giant ice-cream block. The solar gain structure will capture and retain heat for the pools. Photos of the Xiangshan University Campus at Hangzhou, partly constructed from materials recycled from dismantled buildings are on a side wall, whilst the new terminal 3 airport has triangular roof-vents to introduce natural light. When opened the resemble the sales of a giant dragon. The structure which will house the 10,000 workers of the China Central Television Station is a weird giant Z like one of those puzzles where levels run into one another. The Beijing Olympic torch design, on the other hand is based on an ancient curved scroll engraved with the stylised curling clouds seen in traditional Chinese paintings. Like much else in this exhibition it heralds a renaissance in Chinese design fuelled by a growing national awareness.