Ken Adam, Flo-Master, Ausstellungskatalog by O&O Baukunst

KEN ADAM. FLO-MASTER 2017

K E N

A D A M .

F L O - M A S T E R

GREETING

Sir Ken Adam was a visionary. We are immensely proud of his work on the James Bond films. He was responsible for establishing their visual style creating a world of heightened reality. We are forever grateful to him and are thrilled that Boris and Markus continue to keep Kenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legacy alive today. Please enjoy this celebration of his artistry. Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli EON Productions Ltd.

I start to scribble and then I find a certain form I like and I know exactly that if this form functions then it’s almost like when you are with a woman and have an orgasm. […] But when I don’t feel this then I sometimes work for days on a design until it functions, until it is right. That is to say, it is more instinct and intuition that bring out ideas of this kind and the search cannot really be described as an intellectual process. 1

Sir Ken Adam

HYPERREALITY

The colliding triangles that project out of a blackness made up of broad lines woven to form areas resemble a distorted pyramid that has been split open, allowing you to look inside it. A figure suggested at the end of a walkway that projects deep into the abstract, light-flooded space conveys the powerful dimensions of this fantastical place. This person stands directly below the vertex of the pyramid and opposite the spatial vanishing point. Through its positioning the figure forms a clear counterpoint to the broadly described surrounding space. Dynamic mesh structures are stretched across the triangular surfaces. As a meta-structure they visually translate the exploration of the dimensions and emphasise the spatial depth, which on the right appears to vanish into the infinity of the dark space.

1 Panel discussion between Ken Adam und Knuth Elstermann in the Delphi Cinema in Berlin at the book presentation of Adam’s biography by Alexander Smoltczyk, 24. 03. 2002.

Ich fange an zu scribbeln, und dann liegt mir irgendeine Form, und ich weiß genau, wenn diese Form funktioniert, das ist fast so, wie wenn man mit einer Frau zusammen ist und einen Orgasmus hat. […] Wenn ich das allerdings nicht empfinde, arbeite ich manchmal tagelang an einem Design, bis es funktioniert, bis es stimmt. Es ist also doch mehr instinktiv und intuitiv, was solche Ideen nach außen bringt, als daß man diese Suche als einen intellektuellen Prozeß beschreiben kann. 1 Sir Ken Adam

HYPERREALITÄT

Aus dem Schwarz breiter Linien, die zu Flächen verwoben wurden, spannen sich Dreiecke auf, die gegeneinanderstoßen, gleich einer aufgerissenen, verzerrten Pyramide, in deren Inneres man schaut. Am Ende eines Stegs, der weit in den abstrakten, lichtdurchfluteten Raum hineinragt, ist eine Figur angedeutet, die die gewaltigen Dimensionen dieses phantastischen Ortes erst sinnfällig werden lässt. Sie steht direkt unter dem Scheitelpunkt der Pyramide und gegenüber dem räumlichen Fluchtpunkt. Mit ihrer Positionierung bildet sie einen klaren Kontrapunkt zum weitgefassten Umraum. Dynamische Gitternetzstrukturen sind über die Dreiecksflächen gespannt. Als Metastruktur übersetzen sie das Ausloten der Dimensionen visuell und betonen die Tiefenräumlichkeit, die sich rechts in der Unendlichkeit des dunklen Raums zu verlieren scheint.

1 Podiumsgespräch zwischen Ken Adam und Knuth Elstermann im Kino Delphi in Berlin anlässlich der Buchpräsentation der Adam-Biografie von Alexander Smoltczyk, 24. 03. 2002.

Many of Ken Adam’s sets and film worlds reveal an entire spectrum of influences and associations that relate to other film artists and architects who are closely connected with the city of his birth, Berlin. Adam himself commented on this as follows. “The Berlin of the 20s formed the foundation of my future education… the Berlin of the UFA studios, of Fritz Lang, Lubitsch and Erich Pommer. The Berlin of the architects Gropius, Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. The Berlin of the painters Max Liebermann, Grosz, Otto Dix, Klee and Kandinsky ….” 2 The drawing shown here leads one to think of the large grille of the roof slab in Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie; it seems to reverberate in the triangular walls of Ken Adam’s drawing .There is something hard and crystalline about the overall impression made by this drawing. Adam achieves the drawing’s formal unity with the aid of an imaginary horizontal rectangular frame. He establishes clear boundaries within which the architectural game played with the basic geometric form of the triangle can develop. Consequently the later film format or camera framing, which he kept in mind from the start, point in a given direction, establishing boundaries for creative freedom that are derived from the visual nature of film. With the powerful strokes of his Flo-Master and with a playful lightness Ken Adam conquers this visionary space which is shaped out of a rare, partly translucent raw material and seamlessly links to the building utopias of the 1920s.For Adam drawing as an intuitive path to knowledge, as a creative design process, is the strength that determines his film architecture: “In my case the lines certainly lead to the draft design.” 3 The drawing described here, which Ken Adam made in 1979 and which shows the Meditation Chamber for the film Star Trek, is chosen to represent the oeuvre of more than 5500 drawings of the legendary production designer, who has inscribed himself in our visual memories with his spectacular film sets.

2 Glancey, Jonathan: „The Grand Illusionist. A Portrait of Ken Adam“, in: The Guardian Weekend, 30. Oktober 1999, p. 24. 3 LoBrutto, Vincent: By Design. Interviews with Film Production Designers, Westport CT 1992, p. 46. Adam continues: “For anyone who wants to become a production designer I regard it as advisable to master freehand sketching, to have an architectural understanding of space, and then to learn all the tricks of the trade – which regrettably seem recently to have

been forgotten.”

Viele der Sets und Filmwelten von Ken Adam halten ein ganzes Spektrum an Einflüssen und Assoziationen anderer Filmkünstler und Architekten bereit, die eng mit seiner Geburtsstadt Berlin verbunden sind. Adam äußerte sich dahingehend selbst mit den Worten „The Berlin of the 20s formed the foundation of my future education… the Berlin of the UFA studios, of Fritz Lang, Lubitsch and Erich Pommer. The Berlin of the architects Gropius, Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. The Berlin of the painters Max Liebermann, Grosz, Otto Dix, Klee and Kandinsky ….“ 2 Bei der hier vorliegenden Zeichnung kommt einem Mies van der Rohes großes Gitter aus der neuen National Galerie in den Sinn; es scheint in Ken Adams Zeichnung wie ein Nachhall auf die dreieckigen Wände übertragen worden zu sein. Der Gesamteindruck dieser Zeichnung vermittelt etwas Hartes und Kristallines. Adam erreicht die formale Einheit der Zeichnung mit Hilfe eines imaginären querrechteckigen Rahmens. Er setzt klare Grenzen, innerhalb derer sich das architektonische Spiel mit der geometrischen Grundform des Dreiecks entfalten kann. Damit lenkt das hier mitgedachte spätere Filmformat bzw. die Kamerakadrierung die Zeichnung bereits in eine vorgegebene Richtung, die den schöpferischen Freiraum in filmoptische Grenzen weist. Mit dem kraftvollen Strich des Flo-Master erobert Ken Adam mit spielerischer Leichtigkeit diesen visionären Raum, der aus einem seltenen, teils transluzenten Rohstoff geformt ist und nahtlos an die Bauutopien der 20er Jahre anschließt. Zeichnen als intuitiver Erkenntnisweg, als schöpferischer Entwurfsprozess ist für Adam die bestimmende Kraft seiner Filmarchitekturen: „In meinem Fall führen sicherlich die Linien zum Gestaltungsentwurf.“ 3 Die hier beschriebene Entwurfszeichnung des Meditation Chamber für den Film Star Trek, die Ken Adam im Jahr 1979 anfertigte, steht stellvertretend für das über 5500 Zeichnungen umfassende Oeuvre des legendären Production Designers, der sich mit seinen spektakulären Filmsets in unser visuelles Gedächtnis eingeschrieben hat.

2 Glancey, Jonathan: „The Grand Illusionist. A Portrait of Ken Adam“, in: The Guardian Weekend, 30. Oktober 1999, S. 24. 3 LoBrutto, Vincent: By Design. Interviews with Film Production Designers, Westport CT 1992, S. 46. Adam weiter: „Ich halte es für jeden, der Production Designer werden will für ratsam, das freihändige Skizzieren zu beherrschen, ein architektonisches Verständnis von Raum zu haben und dann alle Tricks des Handwerks zu erlenern – die in letzter Zeit, bedauerlicherweise, vergessen zu geraten scheinen.“

These spaces by Adam stand for a model of the world in which fantasy and reality are woven together into an irrationality of space. With Adam the entire spatial setting is frequently filled with an oppressive feeling of fear that is difficult to grasp and in which humanity appears to be trapped. Adam’s drawings strongly exude an atmospheric, expressive and frequently threatening mood. In this drawing of the “Meditation Chamber” the use of chiaroscuro effects that is so characteristic of Adam’s work is intensified to become a strongly expressive handling of light. “Once I started expressing myself as a designer, I always leaned toward the choice of the theatrical. I find it dull to do room as it is. […] It is nearly always a heightened reality-stylization.” 4 The spatial allusions can be traced back to the basic forms of the cube, pyramid, square, circle and triangle. Adam combines them in endless variations to create constantly new architectural images, In a completely natural way Adam succeeds in connecting the architectural ideas of the 1920s with the utopian architectural designs of the historic visionaries who preceded him; Giovanni Batista Piranesi, for example, or Étienne-Louis Boullée. All these influences are blended to form an independent, modern and dramatic architectural language. While committed to a daring technical hyper-reality it loses nothing of its expressive and suggestive quality. Despite what Ken Adam says in the introductory quotation above, intellect and intuition do not exclude each other in his work but are jointly responsible for the powerful impact made by his film architecture down to the present day. Dr. Boris Hars-Tschachotin

4 LoBrutto 1992, p. 38.

Diese Räume von Adam stehen für ein Weltmodell, in dem Phantasie und Realität zu einer Irrationalität des Raumes verwoben werden. So wird bei Adam häufig die gesamte räumliche Umgebung von einem schwer fassbaren, beklemmenden Angstgefühl eingenommen, in dem der Mensch gefangen scheint. Adams Zeichnungen ist ein hohes Maß an atmosphärischer, expressiver und häufig bedrohlicher Stimmung. Der für Adam so charakteristische Umgang mit Chiaroscuro-Effekten wird in dieser Zeichnung des Meditation Chamber zu einer ausdrucksstarken Lichtregie gesteigert. “Once I started expressing myself as a designer, I always leaned toward the choice of the theatrical. I find it dull to do room as it is. […] It is nearly always a heightened reality-stylization.” 4 Die räumlichen Allusionen, die Adam formelhaft zu immer neuen Architekturbildern verbindet, lassen sich auf die Grundformen des Kubus, der Pyramide, des Quadrats, des Kreises und des Dreiecks zurückführen. Ken Adam gelingt mit großer Selbstverständlichkeit der Brückenschlag zwischen den architektonischen Ideen der 1920er Jahre und den utopischen Architekturentwürfen seiner historischen Vordenker, beispielsweise eines Giovanni Batista Piranesi oder Étienne-Louis Boullée. All diese Einflüsse verschmelzen zu einer eigenständigen, modernen wie dramatischen Architektursprache. Sie ist einer kühlen, technischen Hyperrealität verpflichtet, die dabei aber nichts von ihrer Expressivität und Suggestivität einbüßt. Entgegen Ken Adams Aussage im Eingangszitat schließen sich Intellekt und Intuition in seiner Arbeit nicht aus, sondern sind gemeinsam für die bis heute ungebrochene Wirkgewalt dieser Filmarchitekturen verantwortlich. Dr. Boris Hars-Tschachotin

4 LoBrutto 1992, S. 38.

Launch Complex, Pyramid Control Room MOONRAKER, Lewis Gilbert, GB/F Â© 1979 Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved. Courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek, Ken Adam Archive 41.6 x 59.3 cm

Launch Complex, Exhaust Chamber MOONRAKER, Lewis Gilbert, GB/F Â© 1979 Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved. Courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek, Ken Adam Archive 38.3 x 59.3 cm

SYNOPSIS

This revelatory 12-minute film by Boris Hars-Tschachotin, wrought on a shoestring budget, listens in on the late Sir Ken Adam (celebrated for his production design on the early James Bond films, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Barry Lyndon among many others), as he manoeuvres about a drawing table much like the one he used to commandeer at London’s Shepperton Studios. For one last time, at age 93, cigar in hand, the legendary Sir Ken Adam brandishes his Flo-Master, deploying a felt-tip pen as he recreates the designs he conjured for the supposedly nuclear blast-proof conference room, located below the Pentagon, the iconic War Room from the climax of 1964’s Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. While drawing, he anatomizes the fundamental spatial metamorphosis that this center of power went through across months of intense collaboration with the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick.

DIRECTOR‘S NOTE

THIS IS THE WAR ROOM! was inspired by the fact that in 2001 I worked as a location scout for Sir Ken Adam’s last film in Berlin. Back then I literally stood behind him and watched the great illusionist of production design create his powerful drawings. I was able to see how Adam lets the spatial ideas flow as fast as his imagination and hands allow. The goal of this film is to show the magical artistic process of creating cinematic space. The War Room as the key set in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove considerably affected popular conceptions about a room in which decisions of worldwide impact are made. My short documentary gives an insight into how this iconic space was shaped through the expressive drawings by Adam. It can be viewed as a flip-book thriller. During the course of the film the architecture changes dramatically to culminate in the now iconic rendering of the subterranean power center.

That war room set for Strangelove is the best set Ken ever designed, no it’s the best set that’s ever been designed. Steven Spielberg

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY SOUND RECORDIST

GRAPHIC ARTIST

EDITING SOUND DESIGN

MUSIC SUPER SPECIAL THANKS TO

VISUAL EFFECTS ARTIST

VFX SUPERVISOR CAMERA FOR SMOKE EFFECTS

POST-PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR STILL PHOTOGRAPHER

TITLE DESIGN PRODUCER

Free Room Design Sir Ken AdamÂ´s last drawing, 2014 Courtesy of Dr. Boris Hars-Tschachotin 21 x 29,5 cm

BIOGRAPHY

FILMOGRAPHY (EXCERPT)

1921 Born on February 5 as Klaus Hugo Adam in Berlin 1934 The family emigrates to London 1936 Death of his father, Fritz Adam 1938 Begins his studies at Bartlett School of Architecture, London 1940 Joins the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps 1941 Begins his training as a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force, changes his name to Keith Howard Adams 1943-45 Joins combat as the first German pilot in the R.A.F. 1947 British citizenship, changes his name to Kenneth (Ken) Adam 1947 Gains first experience in film as draughtsman in Riverside Studios and in Twickenham Film Studios, London; works as assistant art director on Dick Barton strikes back 1951 Meets Letizia Moauro in Ischia, Italy. Marries in August 1952 1955 Works for the first time as art director on Soho Incident; collaborates with William Cameron Menzies on Around the world in eighty days 1958 Start of collaboration with Robert Aldrich on Ten Seconds To Hell 1959 Moves into a house on Montpelier Street in Knightsbridge, London, today still the home of Letizia Adam 1960/61 Production Design for DR. NO, the first movie of the James Bond series 1962 Start of collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove or : How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb 1968 First collaboration with Herbert Ross on Goodbye, Mr Chips 1980 Member of the jury at Cannes International Film Festival 1988 Death of his mother Lilli Adam 1999 Member of the jury of Berlin International Film Festival 2003 Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. 2012 Order of Merit, Federal Republic of Germany; Sir Ken Adam donates his collection to the Deutsche Kinemathek, Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin 2016 Ken Adam passes away on March, 10

Dick Barton Strikes Back, Godfrey Grayson, GB 1949 Around the World in Eighty Days, Michael Anderson, USA 1956 Ten Seconds to Hell, Robert Aldrich, GB/USA 1958 Dr. No, Terence Young, GB/USA 1962 In the Cool of the Day, Robert Stevens, GB 1963 Dr. Strangelove or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Stanley Kubrick, GB / USA 1964 Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton, GB/USA 1964 The Ipcress File, Sidney J. Furie, GB 1965 Thunderball, Terence Young, GB/USA 1965 Funeral in Berlin, Guy Hamilton, GB 1966 You Only Live Twice, Lewis Gilbert, GBA/USA 1967 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ken Hughes, GB/USA 1968 Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Herbert Ross, GB 1969 Diamonds Are Forever, Guy Hamilton, GB/USA 1971 Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick, USA/GB 1975 The Spy Who Loved Me, Lewis Gilbert, GB/USA 1977 Moonraker, Lewis Gilbert, GB/F 1979 Star Trek – The Motion Picture, Robert Wise, USA 1979 Pennies from Heaven, Herbert Ross, USA 1981* Addams Family Values, Barry Sonnenfeld, USA 1993 Taking Sides – Der Fall Furtwängler, István Szabó, D/F/GB 2001

AWARDS (EXCERPT) 1965 1966 1976 1981 1995 2002 2008

BAFTA Award (British film prize) for Dr. Strangelove BAFTA Award for The Ipcress File Academy Award for Barry Lyndon New York Film Critics Award for Pennies From Heaven Academy Award for The Madness Of King George Art Directors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Los Angeles Lucky Strike Designer Award

Ken Adam. Flo-Master 16.11.2017 – 19.01.2018 Curators Dr. Boris Hars-Tschachotin Markus Penell Organisation Robert Bauer Annkatrin Steffen Video Installation: Flo-Master Inverso by Boris Hars-Tschachotin Picture Editing/Motion Design: Stefanie Schmitt Catalog Robert Bauer Translation James Roderick O‘Donovan Illustrations Cover: Launch Complex, Pyramid Control Room, MOONRAKER Courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek, Special Thanks to

Michael G. Wilson and

LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Barbara Broccoli,

EON Productions Ltd.

N°

Thanks to

Dr. Boris Hars-Tschachotin

Danjaq, LLC and

S. 2, 4, 26-27, 30-32, 34: Exhibition

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Photos: Marcus Schneider

Meg Simmons,

S. 29: Plakat: Moritz Koepp and

EON Productions, London

Andreas Michael Velten

Rabia Lingemann,

S. 33: Steve Gödickmeyer

EON Productions, London Leibnizstraße 60

Deutsche Kinemathek,

Print: Graspo, Zlín

10629 Berlin

Ken Adam Archive

Edition: 300

Tel: +49 30 28 48 86 0

Silke Ronneburg, Deutsche

www.o-o-depot.com

Kinemathek, Ken Adam Archive