Sir Kenneth Hugo “Ken” Adam/Klaus Hugo Adam, was born on February 5, 1921, and died on March 10, 2016.
He was a German-born British motion picture production designer.
He was most famous for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s.
Sir Ken Adam first entered the film industry as a draughtsman for This Was a Woman in 1948.
His Italian wife Maria Letitzia, he met while filming in Ischia, and they married on August 16, 1952.
Ken Adam first major screen credit was as production designer on the 1956 British thriller Soho Incident.
During the mid-1950s, Ken worked (uncredited) on the epics Around the World in 80 Days and Ben-Hur.
He received major recognition for the Jacques Tourneur cult horror film Night of the Demon, and he was the production designer on several films directed by Robert Aldrich.
Ken was hired for the first James Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962.
During 1964, Ken designed the famous war room set for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
Sir Ken Adam turned down the opportunity to work on Kubrick’s next project 2001: A Space Odyssey after he found out that Kubrick had been working with NASA for a year on space exploration, and that would put him at a disadvantage in developing his art.
This gave him the opportunity to make his name with his innovative, semi-futuristic sets for further James Bond films such as Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
The supertanker set made for The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 was the largest sound stage in the world at the time it was built.
Adam’s last Bond film was Moonraker in 1979.
Ken was naturalized as a British citizen and was awarded the OBE for services to the film industry.
In 2003, Sir Ken Adam was knighted for services to the film industry and Anglo-German relations.
Sir Ken Adam passed away at 95 yrs old.