John Box

John Box ( born January 27, 1920 in London, † 7 March 2005 in Leatherhead, Surrey ) was a British art director.

Life and work

Box spent his childhood in Ceylon and took an early interest for architecture. He then began to study architecture in London. In 1947 he began a six-year -lasting traineeship including as assistant to the Delham Studios before he became chief architect in 1953.

Its great design talent could make box at the main British major productions from the 60s to 80s demonstrated as proven above all his outstanding decor to David Lean's monumental epics Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. Was praised in particular its comprehensive sense of style and the ability to make a particular era and their life circumstances through film architecture experience: for example, the Victorian England in Oliver, the Kingdom of Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons and the outgoing Tsardom in Russia 1917/18 in Nicholas and Alexandra.

Among his last works stood out above all The Legacy, a gambling in a barren Romanian fortress mixture of horror and war strip, smoke and fog geschwängerte, apocalyptic, eschatological and light-filled world created for the box with crosses, tombs and caves.

He was several times for Academy Awards ( Oscar) in the category of Art Direction nominated four times and won it. Three times he won the Best Production Design BAFTA award in the category.

Awards (selection)

Box was several times nominated for an Oscar and won this: