Series of talks looking at the crossover between architecture and film.

We know Ken Adam as a prolific movie set designer, most memorably for the Bond films (Moonraker - worst movie, best sets). Yet you could argue that Adam was as much an "unbuilt architect" as he was a set designer; there were great architects of the 20th century whose projects remained mainly on paper, but not so many whose projects lived entirely on screen. Like early modernist architects Erich Mendelsohn, or Hans Poelzig, he was a German Jew (born Klaus Adam) who emigrated in the early 1930's to escape rising fascism. The two worlds overlap heavily; these pioneers were no strangers to set design (Poelzig for one was responsible for the expressionist sets of The Golem) and Adam actually trained as an architect at the Bartlett. A certain Norman Foster has cited him as an influence more than once (which makes a lot of sense: compare and contrast).

Not only is Sir Christopher Frayling our Rector of the Royal College of Art, he is also chairman of the Arts Council, a frequent voice on Radio 4 and a film fanatic. He has written many books on the popular end of film, from "Nightmare: Birth of Horror" to studies on spaghetti westerns including Leone’s biography "Something to do with Death." In 2005 he wrote "Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design." When featured last year on Desert Island discs, his choice included "Reasons to be Cheerful" by Ian Dury and of course the theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." According to Frayling, Sir Ken Adam is acknowledged as the world’s greatest living production designer, as well as one of the most prolific. He has designed 75 films, creating the bold and revolutionary designs for seven James Bond movies, as well as the startling war room in Kubrick’s "Dr Strangelove." He won Oscars for Stanley Kubrick’s "Barry Lyndon" and "The Madness of George III."