Streaming Shelter

Although Shelter, the Australian streaming service that boasts of carrying “the best architecture films in the world,” launched on July 31, 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and #WFH, it wasn't until the death of filmmaker Michael Blackwood at the end of February that I signed up for it. While Shelter does not have every one of the 46 architecture documentaries made by Blackwood, the Michael Blackwood Collection (one of currently seven “channels” on the streaming service) has half of them — or at least a full day's worth of binge watching, plenty for fans of architecture. If Shelter did not have any Blackwood films, it would be hard for the service to call itself the best streaming provider of architecture films. Given that Shelter has so many of his films — and so many other documentaries, including their own originals — it is one indication that the people behind it are serious about the content they provide and aware of who their audience is.

According to an article in Variety in July 2020, Shelter was started by Australian actor-producer and entrepreneur Dustin Clare, “[it was] built on a technology platform from New Zealand’s Shift 72,” which had previously provided software for film festivals in Australia, and it launched “with an initial 200 hours of content.” (If the 23 Blackwood docs were part of that initial launch, they would have comprised more than 10% of those hours.) Most likely the 200 hours are now considerably greater, though given how distribution contracts work in the age of Netflix, it is safe to assume that non-original content will come and go on Shelter, giving subscribers new films and TV shows to watch without the service acting as an archive or repository of architecture documentaries. People with subscriptions to Netflix, Kanopy, and other streaming services will have an easy time navigating Shelter: finding content via browsing, specialized channels and curated collections, keyword search and tags, or blog posts drawing attention to particular films.

At the time of its launch, the Shelter Originals consisted of the six-episode Inspired Architecture, a series that “explores six uniquely Australian structures all in their own way inspirational and isolated.” The 15-minute films directed by Jim Lounsbury have since been joined by a second season of Inspired Architecture as well as other series by other directors: Architecture on the Edge, Tiny Spaces, Follies, and Mexity, among others. It is hardly surprising that Shelter started its originals in its backyard, but the series added since show an open embrace of other parts of the worlds and other architectures, both old and new. Follies, for instance, is a tour by architectural historian and author Rory Fraser of those namesake structures in England, most of them more than a century old, while Mexity is a series by Mario Novas and Kate Kliwadenko that looks at public spaces, low-cost housing, and other projects being created in Mexico City. (It should be noted that these and other series feature online conversations — “extras” — with the filmmakers.) The newest original, coming soon, is Churches of Iceland, an examination of buildings that “have been instrumental in shaping the country's architectural landscape since the arrival of Christianity in 1000 CE.”

The multiple original series with “tiny” in the title point to an interest in residential design at small scales rather than ostentatious displays of wealth in grand estates or, at the other end of the spectrum, the many renovation-focused series on HGTV and the like, where demolition is celebrated and design “innovation” is limited to open plans and surface aesthetics rather than architects doing more with less. Leaning into “tiny” and featuring the architects who design in that vein is refreshing, but is it enough to maintain a streaming service or draw the audience to keep Shelter growing its offerings?

So, beyond the Shelter Originals and the Michael Blackwood Collection, mentioned above, what else is streaming on Shelter? Subscribers logging into the website or looking at the app see new content at the top. At the moment that first film is The Proposal, the 2018 feature-length film that follows conceptual artist Jill Magid in her quest to return Luis Barragán's archive from the campus of Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany, to Mexico City. The culmination of The Barragán Archives, a multifaceted five-year project by Magid, The Proposal is an important and rewarding film that should be part of any streaming service devoted to architecture. Other documentaries recently added to Shelter include: Mario Botta: The Sacred the Profane, Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe and City Dreamers (both directed by Joseph Hillel), and Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, among others.

These movies are musts for Shelter, as are The Pruitt-Igoe Myth and Strange and Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island; but why carry Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect, the 15-year-old film by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, but not REM, the more recent film by Koolhaas's son, Thomas? And where are Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect: A Son's Journey and Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry, two of the most famous architecture documentaries this century? While it's not hard to think of films, TV shows, and shorts missing from Shelter (e.g., Koolhaas Houselife and other films of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, the great but hard-to-find ACB docs by Richard Copans and Stan Neumann, Los Angeles Plays Itself, …), it's unreasonable to expect Shelter to have every imaginable documentary on architecture in existence. As of now, the balance between originals and other content works fairly well, although this reviewer would love to see a stronger catalog of documentaries on architecture and other films related to the subject.

At a monthly cost of just $5.99 in the United States, where this reviewer is located, or less than half the cost of a standard Netflix subscription, the price is reasonable, though it is also a reflection of the amount of content available on the platform. Feasibly, one could binge all of the Shelter Originals and other documentaries of note in one month, making a continued subscription unnecessary — at least, until Shelter adds a must-see exclusive in the future. But would anyone do that? Probably not, as architecture documentaries are some of the least bingable content available to stream. So the answer to the question about Shelter being worth the (albeit small) investment comes down, not to the amount of content available, but a subscriber's interest in architecture films, more widely, and the specific offerings provided by Shelter. To lure subscribers and keep them there, Shelter must continue its originals, which are very well done and commendable for their regional foci, but also greatly expand its non-original content. Making people appreciate films on architecture means providing a home for the best architecture films ever made.