‘What I felt at that time – we’re talking about ’61 – was that I couldn’t remember seeing a film that reflected the age we were living in.’
KEN ADAM
Born in Berlin in 1921 and later one of a small handful of German RAF pilots in the Second World War, the production design genius Sir Kenneth Adam changed more than just movie artistry. His seven films drawing for 007 did not just set the standard. They were the standard. And seven decades later, they still are.
With his faithful Flo-Master pens, architectural eye meets Dr. Caligari perspectives via trademark charcoal contouring, Adam’s work on Bond alone changed the size of the movies.
Before Ken Adam, the size and scale of Hollywood was the arena of biblical epics, massive Californian-shot sandals and swords follies, showbiz soap operas, pirate adventures and the interior soundstage world of the musical.
Yet, the 1960s – and 1960s Hollywood – had their sights on making less films celebrating war, your parents’ battles and tall ship heroism. Popular culture, music, fashion, sexual politics and cinema were about to get an upgrade – in curiously similar ways to the Berlin of 1930s and a young Ken’s formative years. With a post-war confidence and a more youthful vitality calling the shots in the early 1960s, the Cold War may have been propelled by the atomic age of the 1950s. But, it had yet to find its mainstream cinematic equivalent of the 1950s war movie.
Cue Ken Adam and his Flo-Master pens…
One of the best publishers of cultural, photograph and cinematic histories and art is Taschen. The house behind the always lush The James Bond Archives, Taschen is now publishing The Ken Adam Archive.
Through a series of revealing interviews with his biographer Sir Christopher Frayling, The Ken Adam Archive sees the master designer recall his career, spectacular vision, Bond, Kubrick, artistry, sense of space and material, and cinematic mind.
In a rich and beautifully produced publication that shows the dynamic Berlin-born Adam framed as a German-British refugee and rare German RAF fighter pilot, The Ken Adam Archive also details the processes that went into seven decades and over fifty years of movie production design.
With a rich and rather lush registry of literally hundreds of storyboards, sketches, photographs, archival footage and concepts from both the archives of Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek (where Adam bequeathed all his designs and work in 2012) and the extensive treasures of Bond’s EON Productions, The Ken Adam Archive promises new glimpses and graphical insights into the striking and evergreen work of Sir Ken Adam. It also offers a fascinating study of the lesser familiar work, collaborations and design projects.
“He is in the tradition of those theoretical visionaries…his control of light and space and drama – these great caverns…. that’s Ken. He’s the architect.”
sir norman foster
“Mr. Adam never saw a circle that he couldn’t stretch into an oval, a right angle that he couldn’t squeeze into a dagger point, a horizontal or vertical line that he couldn’t tip over to a diagonal.”
The economist, march 2016
Adam has also naturally been the subject of a great many exhibitions, design lectures, film festivals, symposiums and installation tributes. His artistic reach always ensured good box-office and attendance as his contemporary zeal always stretched way beyond the 1960s.
In 1999, London’s V&A launched Ken Adam – Designing the Cold War filled London’s V&A and Moonraker, Strangelove and Other Celluloid Dreams – The Visionary Art of Ken Adam filled The Serpentine.
EON Productions own touring exhibition Designing 007 – Fifty Years of 007 Style (2012) naturally presented original Adam sketches and his showmanship filled all of the zones dedicated to the artistry of Bond.
And Washington DC’s Exquisitely Evil – 50 Years of Bond Villains was a long-standing testament to Adam with exhibition zones willfuly echoing the minerals and metal of Ken Adam’s interiors – and not a million miles from The White House (where Bond films have always played – including Adam’s Goldfinger, which President Carter watched when he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and who, in turn, was famously amazed the war rooms never resembled those that Ken created for Dr. Strangelove).
The Ken Adam Archives by Sir Christopher Frayling
£850
Taschen
360 pages
1,200 copies
Hardcover, bound in iridescent bicolor fabric with 4-phase hologram.
36 x 36 cm / 3.88 kg – with engraved acrylic book stand.
ISBN 978-3-8365-5187-8
English
March 28th 2023
Fore more on the genius and life of Ken Adam:
