(written from a Production point of view)
Ken Adam, later known as Sir Kenneth Hugo Adam, OBE (5 February 1921 – 10 March 2016; age 95) was a renowned Berlin-born British production designer, Academy Award winner, and veteran of more than seventy films between 1948 and 2001.
In the mid-1970s, Adam was commissioned to redesign the starship USS Enterprise, shuttlecraft and sets for the proposed Star Trek: Planet of the Titans film. [1] [2] [3]
Adam's designs for the film were further developed and illustrated by Ralph McQuarrie but the film was eventually shelved during pre-production. [4]
Career[]
Adam is best known for the creation of revolutionary and iconic production designs for Dr. Strangelove (1964) and seven James Bond films, including You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (where he met Derek Meddings whom he brought along to work Planet of the Titans) and Moonraker (1979). For the Bond films, he was renowned for integrating futurism with classical design elements.
This approach continued under his successors, Peter Lamont (1981 - 2006) and Dennis Gassner. Gassner's set designs for the Bond films, commencing with Quantum of Solace (2008), were influenced by early Adam-designed sets.
Being of Jewish descent, the Adam family fled Germany in 1934 upon the rise to power of the Nazi party, after which Ken Adam became one of the few German nationals who served in the UK's Royal Air Force during World War II.
Shortly before his death in 2016, Adam became honored in his city of birth, Berlin from which he was forced to flee eighty years earlier, with the retrospective 11 December 2014 – 17 May 2015 "Bigger than Life – Ken Adam’s Film Design" exhibition of his work for the motion picture industry, which also featured some of his Planet of the Titans production designs. [5]
External links[]
- Ken Adam at the Internet Movie Database
- Ken Adam at Wikipedia