Ken Adam

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Sir Ken Adam (born 5 February 1921 as Klaus Adam) is a production designer most famous for his set designs for the early films in the James Bond series.

1 Life
2 Films
3 Awards
4 Further reading
5 External links

Ken Adam was born in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish family. His family moved to England in 1934, when Adam was 12 years old. Later, he attended London University training to be an architect. Although he was still a German national, he served as a pilot for the Royal Air Force during World War II, where he flew the Hawker Typhoon on many missions over NW Europe. This was a brave move: if he had been shot down and captured, instead of being sent to a prisoner of war camp, the Germans would have been able to hang him as a traitor. Adam was the only German national to be an RAF fighter pilot. He was later naturalised as a British citizen and was knighted in 2003 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Adam first entered the film industry as a draughtsman for This Was a Woman (1948). He made his name with his innovative, semi-futuristic sets for the James Bond films such as Dr. No (1962), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The supertanker set for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was the largest sound stage in the world at the time it was built.

He worked with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove which centres around the impressive "war room" set, and on Barry Lyndon, which won Adam an Oscar. He also designed the famous car for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was also produced by the same team that was responsible for the James Bond film series. During the late 1970's he worked on storyboards and concept art for a new Star Trek film which was in pre-production. The film, known as Planet of the Titans was eventually shelved by Paramount Pictures, but parts of his work were eventually used in the redesigned Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).