http://magicalnihilism.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/who-stole-my-volcano/
"I saw Sir Ken Adam, production designer of numerous Bonds, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and Dr. Strangelove amongst other movies, interviewed by Christopher Frayling at the V&A last Friday, as part of their current Cold War Modern exhibit.
"As a result, Frayling concentrated the conversation on those iconic Cold War images of the war room in Dr. Strangelove, and the numerous lairs for Bond Villains he had designed.
Frayling described these lairs with a lovely turn of phrase, paraphrasing Corbusier’s “houses are machines for living in” - that they were “Machines for being a meglomaniac in”.
Adam responded that his intention was to make the Bond Villain a contemporary creature. They should embedded in the material culture of the times - albeit with the resources of a meglomaniac millionaire or billionaire - and also able to reach a little bit beyond into a near-future as those resources allow.
Although rather than maintaining a purely high-modernist aesthetic, Adam’s villains were ostentatious, status-seeking magpies, with their old masters from a daring heist, siberian tiger rugs and priceless antiques on display next to their Eames recliners and Open-plan freestanding fireplaces.
“Gantries and Baroque” might be the best name for the look (((awesome coinage there))) though, as this finery was, of course, all inside the ’sanctum-sanctorum’ of their lair - generally they would have maintained such a well-appointed apartment somewhere within a more massive and industrial death-dealing facility staffed by uniformed private armies.
Frayling pointed out this repeating formula in the 60s and 70s Bond movies to the audience. A hidden fortress, that had to be discovered, infiltrated and destroyed with a girl/goddess as guide - but not to be destroyed before we could take in some of the fine lifestyle touches that supervillainy gave as rewards.
But then in an almost throw-away aside to Adam, he reflected that the modern Bond villain (and he might have added, villains in pop culture in general) is placeless, ubiquitous, mobile.
His hidden fortress is in the network, represented only by a briefcase, or perhaps even just a mobile phone.
Where’s the fun in that for a production designer?
Maybe it’s in the objects. It’s not the pictures that got small, but the places our villains draw they powers from.
Perhaps the architypical transformation from gigantic static lair to mobile, compact “UbiLair” is in the film Spartan, where Val Kilmer’s anti-heroic ronin carries everything he needs in his “go-bag” - including a padded shooting mat that unfolds from it to turn any place into a place where he holds the advantage... (((The "Asymmetrical Attacker Look." The "Empowered Global Guerrilla Chic.")))
