Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1921 Berlin, Germany

Died: 2016 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1934

Other name/s: Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam, Klaus Adam

Biography

Designer Ken Adam (Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam) was born in 1921 to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany; his father, Fritz, a former Prussian cavalryman, owned a high-fashion clothes shop and his mother ran a boarding house. Adam recalled of his early years: 'My background as a boy growing up in Berlin with architects like Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Erich Mendelsohn obviously had some influence on me. I was fascinated by shapes and light and shade and big surfaces' (Guardian Obituary). The family enjoyed a comfortable life until the Nazis rise to power when Klaus and his brother Dieter were sent to a boarding school in Edinburgh, where Klaus anglicised his name to Kenneth. After his father's arrest and subsequent release by the SS, the family decided to relocate to England in 1934.

Adam studied at St Paul’s School in west London. His interest in theatre and cinema, which was first cultivated through acquaintances in Berlin, was further fostered by conversations with Jewish refugees living in the Hampstead boarding house which his mother ran. He was introduced to Hungarian filmmaker Vincent Korda, who recommended he study architecture in order to pursue a career in film design. Adam took evening classes in architecture at the Bartlett School at University College London before joining the architecture firm, CW Glover, at the age of 17. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Adam enrolled in the Auxillary Military Pioneer Corps before joining the RAF where he was one of only three German-born men to serve. He trained in Scotland and Canada and fought in several battles on the continent, including the liberation of Normandy by the Allies. In 1946 he became a naturalised British citizen. Adam's first-ever work on a film was as an uncredited assistant designer in 1948; his first major screen credit was as production designer on the British thriller Soho Incident (1956). Adam’s first credit as production designer was on Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon, 1957). He gained major recognition three years later when the Moscow Film Festival honoured him for his work on The Trials of Oscar Wilde. The film's producer, Albert Broccoli, then offered Adam the position as production designer for the first James Bond film, Dr. No, released in 1962. Adam would design six more James Bond films, creating sets for some of the franchise’s most memorable scenes. During his career, Adam created set designs for over 70 films, including Barry Lyndon, Dr Strangelove, (both directed by Stanley Kubrick) and The Madness of King George, as well as designing the iconic car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He received two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and two British Film Academy Awards.

When asked by film critic Fionnuala Halligan in an interview (screendaily.com) about his collaboration with directors and producers, Adam stated: ‘When a designer has a lot of imagination, well, he is an artist in a way and he is an artist who has to be respected'. He was awarded an OBE in 1996 and knighted in 2003. In 1997 Adam made his debut in the opera world designing Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, directed by Piero Faggioni. Adam`s cumbersome and spectacular sets challenged the theatre`s technical resources and set a benchmark in operatic design. The stage crew, much as they admired Adam and his work, were heard to remark that `this scenery belongs on a bloody film set`. Adam also made stage designs for the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg, directed by William Friedkin. The designs were reminiscent of the expressionist atmosphere of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a Weimar silent horror film from 1920 that had a profound impact on Adam's aesthetic sense. In the end, Adam`s designs were not used, because, when the opera was finally produced, he was too busy working on the film In and Out (1997). In 1999 the Serpentine Gallery, London celebrated Adam`s film and theatre designs in the exhibition Moonraker, Strangelove and other Celluloid Dreams: The Visionary Art of Ken Adam, devised and curated by noted art critic, David Sylvester. This was the first exhibition in a publicly funded art gallery in Britain, devoted solely to a film production designer. Adam was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 2009 and in 2012 he donated his entire archive, including drawings, military medals, and awards, to the Deutsche Kinemathek. Adam died in 2016 in London.

Related books

Ian Christie, 'Architect of Dreams', Patek Philippe International Magazine, 2012, Vol. 3, No. 7, p. 56
David Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006) Vol. 1 (A to L)
Christopher Frayling, Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design (London: Faber and Faber, 2005)
Alexander Smoltczyk, James Bond, Berlin, Hollywood – Die Welten des Ken Adam (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2002)
Ken Adam and David Sylvester, Moonraker, Strangelove and Other Celluloid Dreams: The Visionary Art of Ken Adam (London: Phillip Galgiani, 1999)
Jonathan Glancey, 'The Grand Illusionist' The Guardian, 30 October 1999

Public collections

Deutsche Kinemathek

Related organisations

St Paul’s School, London (student)
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (student)
Academy Awards (recipient)
British Film Academy Awards (recipient)

Selected exhibitions

Stanley Kubrik, Design Museum, London (2019)
Bigger than Life, Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin (2014)
Moonraker, Strangelove and other Celluloid Dreams: The Visionary Art of Ken Adam, Serpentine Gallery (1999–2000)
Ken Adam – Designing the Cold War, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1999)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Ken Adam]