Designers of the James Bond universe: Film Designer Ken Adam died – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Millions of moviegoers have delighted in the James Bond films of the sixties and seventies, not only for the secret agent and his adventures, but also for the technically sophisticated features: Bonds futuristic cars or the insane command centers of the villains who wanted to dominate the world, fascinated the audience. Inventor of science fiction world was born in Berlin Ken Adam. Now the film designer died at the age of 95 years.

Sir Kenneth Adam, now ennobled as Klaus Hugo Adam was born in 1921 in Berlin. The upper middle-class Jewish family Adam ran a department store for sports and fashion. She emigrated in 1934 to London, where Klaus Hugo Adam late ’30s began with a study of architecture.

At the beginning of World War II he joined the Royal Air Force, though he still was a German official. He flew missions “against the Nazis and Hitler, but not against Germany,” he said in an interview with the station “3sat”, 2014. Some members of the large family Adam, who had remained in Germany did not survive the Holocaust, they were killed in concentration camps.

Oscar for Design in Kubrick film

Until 2001, Adam was responsible for the design and production of nearly 50 films. Twice he won an Oscar for Best Production Design: 1976 for the Stanley Kubrick film “Barry Lyndon” and 1995 for “King George – Madness” by Nicholas Hytner. Six times he was nominated for an Oscar.

2015 was in Berlin and Munich, a major exhibition with an overview of his work shown. She was possible because Adam 2012 had handed over his entire artistic estate as far back as the German Film Archive in Berlin. A first thanks for Adam was then a star on the Avenue of Stars in Berlin.

To the film came the young architect Ken Adam in the fifties. With “James Dr No” began in 1962 the now legendary series with the British secret agent, the Ken Adam endowed with “Moonraker – Top Secret,” they ended 1979. In seven Bond films he could in the design of the film sets his imagination free rein. His artistic credo: “No design is worth the effort, if one wants to repeat only the reality.”

Aston Martin with ejector seat

He created fantastic worlds in which art and Nature combined with each other. They played with a fright, but were not devoid of humor. Adam also therefore to equip Bond with the popular technical toys began: a cigarette, from the suddenly a projectile is shot, or a ballpoint pen with built-in grenade

But the favorite gadget of James Bond fans have been the. silver Aston Martin, he drove in “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball”. The car had not only ejection seat, radar and changing license plates, but, if need be, even machine guns in the indicators.

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The best known and most absurd story about Ken Adam has a particularly prominent heroes. For Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb “from 1964 was built by Adam a War Room for the tips of the policy and the military in time of war. When Ronald Reagan 1980 American president was, he wanted to see this command center -. But it did not give, only in the movies