Ken Adam designed the iconic sets for Dr Strangelove, which we were at the Arnolfini to see, and it was very cool to see the original drawings of the war room. Kubrick cut the sho of the whole from the film to maintain its claustrophobic feel, but it was pretty awesome:
Not only that, but Adam drew it as a second attempt to please Kubrick who was staring down over his shoulder.
I learned too that the war room table was covered with green baize, to instill the feel of a poker game, amongst the actors at least.
But of course Ken Adam also designed a a multitude of Bond films in the 1960s and 1970s, and Addam’s Family Values, winning two Academy Awards for best art direction. There were some other fascinating facts in the talk by Christopher Frayling at the Arnolfini, I hadn’t even known that Ken Adam’s family had fled Berlin in the 1930s:
- Ken Adam was one of just two German citizens to fly RAF fighter planes in WW2;
- his parent’s sports shop in Berlin, designed by Mies van der Rohe, equipped a number of mountain films (but none of Leni Reifenstahl’s);
- he went to school with Wernher von Braun;
- architect Norman Foster was deeply influenced by Ken Adam’s design of Bond villain’s lairs and volcano bases;
- Ken Adam was a student at the Bartlett school of architecture and planning in London
It made me wonder to myself why it is I love architecture and cities, and yet never paid much attention to set design, and what that might tell us about the emotional affect and signification of space and building.
And of course, films are highly influential in their turn. I’ve heard this about Metropolis, about Blade Runner. But of course some of Ken Adam’s incredible and evocative sets influenced modern corporate architecture, the villains of today.
