Ken Adam

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Adam at the inauguration of his star on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin with Mayor Wowereit (2012)

Sir Kenneth Adam , also Ken Adam , OBE , (born February 5, 1921 in Berlin ; † March 10, 2016 in London ; born Klaus Hugo Adam ) was a German-British film architect . Adam's work achieved particular fame when he created elaborate sets for several James Bond films in the 1960s and 1970s . Adam's best-known set is the War Room in Stanley Kubrick's military satire Dr. Strange or How I Learned to Love the Bomb (1964). Director Steven Spielberg considers the War Room to be "the best production design that has ever been designed for a film."

Life

Klaus Adam was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Berlin. Adam's parents Lilli and Fritz Adam, along with the brothers Georg, Siegfried and Otto Adam, owned a chain of department stores, including the sports fashion store S. Adam in Berlin, Friedrichstrasse / corner of Leipziger Strasse . The new building erected in the 1920s was a reinforced concrete building with a then modern glass facade, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe . The company was founded in 1863 by Saul David Adam and had department stores in Berlin, Hamburg and Chemnitz. Saul David Adam died in Berlin in 1905. Brother Georg Adam died in Berlin in 1930, Siegfried Adam in Tarasp-Vulpera, Switzerland in 1929.

Klaus Adam attended the French grammar school . During this time he found a pleasure in copying paintings and sculptures, he made busts of Goethe and Schiller and painted self-portraits of Van Gogh . In 1934 he emigrated to Great Britain with his parents and siblings Dieter, Loni and Peter . His mother, Lilli Adam, ran a guesthouse in London- Hampstead , which became a meeting place for doctors, actors and musicians who had emigrated. Adam went to St Paul's School in Barnes , London. He then studied architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London . At the same time he was already working in an architecture office, where one of the younger partners was a former assistant to Erich Mendelsohn .

At the beginning of the Second World War , his family was in danger of being interned as enemy foreigners . But Ken Adam signed up for the Royal Pioneer Corps and later flew as a fighter pilot in the British Air Force missions "against the Nazis and Hitler, but not against Germany". Adam did not have a British passport at the time, making him the only German in the British Air Force. In 1944 his brother Dieter joined them.

Not all members of the Adam family were able to get to safety in time. Georg Adam's son Herbert was arrested in 1937 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp , and in 1938 to the Buchenwald concentration camp . On November 9, 1939 Herbert Adam and 20 other prisoners were shot in revenge for Georg Elser's Bürgerbräu assassination attempt on Hitler in Munich in the Buchenwald concentration camp quarry. Georg Adam's wife Hedwig died on January 14, 1940 in Berlin. Ken Adam's cousin Gerhard returned to Germany from Brussels in 1969, where he lived until 1986.

In 1951, Ken Adam met the Italian mannequin Letizia Moauro while filming The Crimson Pirate in Ischia and married her the following year. Even then, she designed handbags and from then on became his most important advisor. All of his film sets are drawn with a wide felt-tip pen from the Flo-Master brand , which has also become a preferred tool for many other graphic artists.

Adam came to film in the 1950s as a production designer. His most famous designs were realized for the films of the perfectionist Stanley Kubrick and for seven films in the James Bond series. His designs were artistically influenced by Bauhaus architecture and expressionist German film . The War Room from Dr. Strange or: How I Learned to Love the Bomb (1964) made film history not just for production designers. When then US President Ronald Reagan was inducted into his office in 1981, he inquired about the location of the War Room . From 1962 onwards, Adam designed the increasingly complex set-ups for the successful James Bond series, the design of which had a decisive influence on the films. Adam designed, among other things, the secret command centers of Bond's adversaries, which stood out due to their monumental dimensions and their spectacular conception (artificial volcanic crater, supertanker, space station, etc.). Architects like Daniel Libeskind acknowledge that their architecture was inspired by the Ken Adams film sets.

Ken Adam Archive at the Deutsche Kinemathek

In September 2012, Ken Adam presented his artistic work to the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The collection consists of 6,200 objects, including over 4,000 drawings, sketches for titles from all creative periods, photo albums for individual films, storyboards of his employees, motif photos, memorabilia, military medals and identification documents as well as all film awards including the two Oscars .

In 2016, the Deutsche Kinemathek made the graphic work of the archive accessible via an online presentation. This fulfills Ken Adam's wish that his work should serve as inspiration for future generations.

On December 10, 2014, the exhibition Bigger than Life. Was presented at a press conference in the presence of Ken Adam in the Deutsche Kinemathek . Ken Adam's film design opens. The exhibition was on view in their rooms from December 11, 2014 to May 17, 2015, after which it was shown from June 30 to September 13, 2015 in the art foyer of the Bavarian Insurance Chamber in Munich.

Filmography

Production Designer

Art Department

Participation in the pre-production phase (in brackets the year in which Ken Adam worked on the film project):

  • 1959: Ruler of the Seas (John Paul Jones) (1956)
  • 1961: In the Nick (1959)
  • 1961: The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
  • 1969: Her Majesty's Secret (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) (1968)
  • 1977: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1977)
  • 1987: The Last Emperor (The Last Emperor) (1985)

Awards (selection)

Oscar in the equipment category :

Oscar nominations in the equipment category :

Further awards

Literature (chronological)

Documentaries

  • Shadow and light. Ken Adam, film architect. Documentary, Germany, 2003, 60 min., Script and direction: Jörg Plenio and Andreas Velten, production: Plenio Filmproduktion, Bayerisches Fernsehen , synopsis by ARD .

Web links

Commons : Ken Adam  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Conrad: Ken Adam died. The man who armed 007. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 11, 2016, with pictures from the Ken Adam exhibition.
  2. ↑ AP : 'Dr. Strangelove, 'Bond Production Designer Adam Dies at 95. In: New York Times , March 10, 2016: "In the art of production design, Adam's work on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic is widely considered among the craft's highest achievements."
  3. ↑ William Grimes: Ken Adam, Who Dreamed Up the Lairs of Movie Villains, Dies at 95. In: New York Times , March 12, 2016: "… it's the best set that's ever been designed."
  4. ^ A b c Felix Stephan : Film architecture by Ken Adam. The happy futurist. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 13, 2014.
  5. ↑ Petra Ahne: Ken Adam left Berlin 67 years ago - now the James Bond architect works in Babelsberg: The Builder of Illusions. In: Berliner Zeitung , September 16, 2000.
  6. ↑ a b Stefanie Appel: 50 years of James Bond. How designer Ken Adam created the myth of 007. ( Memento of the original from April 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.3sat.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: 3sat , December 9, 2014.
  7. ^ Nicole Büsing, Heiko Klaas: Bonds builder. In: Pfälzischer Merkur , December 29, 2014.
  8. ↑ a b c Horatia Harrod: Ken Adam: the man who drew the Cold War. In: Daily Telegraph , September 28, 2008.
  9. ↑ a b c exhibitions 2014. Berlin and London. In: Deutsche Kinemathek , accessed on January 3, 2015.
  10. ↑ Norman Kietzmann: Interview with Ken Adam. In: designlines.de , December 9, 2008.
  11. ↑ Michael Zöllner: The Architect James Bond Loved. In: BZ , December 10, 2014.
  12. ^ A b Andreas Conrad: Exhibition in the Deutsche Kinemathek. Ken Adam: Wizard with a pen. In: Der Tagesspiegel , December 11, 2014.
    Carolin Weidner: A large-format life. In: taz , December 18, 2014.
  13. ^ Andreas Conrad: James Bonds chief designer. In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 4, 2012.
  14. ↑ Jörg Becker: I love to draw very quickly to let the ideas flow. In: Ray (magazine) , March 2016.
  15. ↑ Bigger Than Life. Ken Adam's film design. In: Deutsche Kinemathek , exhibition 2014/15, accessed on January 3, 2015.
  16. ↑ Anke Sterneborg: New exhibition about film designer Ken Adam - The man with the magic pencil. ( Memento from December 13, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ). In: RBB Kulturradio , December 11, 2014.
  17. ↑ Press release: Bigger than Life. Ken Adam's film design. ( Memento from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: Deutsche Kinemathek , November 2014, (PDF file, 2 pages, 82 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Adam, Ken
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adam, Klaus (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British production designer
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 2016
Place of death London