Renowned architectural photographer John Gollings leads the line-up of inspiring design and architecture stories in Shelter’s June edition. Shelter is the premium streaming service for architecture, design, lifestyle and outdoor living, delivering a range of fascinating video content to audiences worldwide.
John Gollings’ photographic journey
Shelter explores the world of cutting-edge Australian and Asian architecture through the lens of Gollings in Eye for Architecture, a documentary that follows the trailblazing photographer on an entertaining and visually rich journey through several cities across Australia, China, India and Cambodia.
Known as the unofficial curator of Australian architecture, the 65-year-old photographer believes the perfect architecture shot comes from the building itself.
“The buildings tell me what to do,” Gollings explains. “I’m not the director of the shot. I can get in the helicopter, but then I have to fly around the sky until the building puts on its makeup and displays itself to me and then hopefully I can go snap.”
“I don’t want to be known as an Australian artist, but I’d like to be known as a great photographer who made architecture more accessible and exciting to the viewer,” he says.
The Pruitt-Igoe myth
Shelter in June also covers the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St Louis, Missouri. A high density urban housing development built in 1954 as a solution to the city’s desperate need for low-income housing, the building was brought down in just two decades, with the world-famous image of its implosion only perpetuating a myth of failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatise public housing residents.
Seeking to set the historical record straight, the film examines the interests involved in Pruitt-Igoe’s creation and the broader issues that led to its deterioration and collapse, while re-evaluating the rumours and the stigma that created the myth.
Planet Home Series 1 Australian premiere
This 20-part documentary series explores some of the most innovative, sustainable and creative residential architecture across the globe. Unique luxury suspended huts in Sweden, a restored former rail freight station in Paris, affordable eco-friendly houses for all in Quebec, a sustainable town of 7,000 residents in the heart of a mining region in Loos-en-Gohelle, jungle bungalows for nature enthusiasts in Costa Rica, and a resort in the middle of the Pacific Ocean founded by Marlon Brando – these are a few of the truly exemplary and adventurous sites featured in the film.
Planet Home Series 1 goes beyond these buildings to spotlight those who live in them – the heroes who already have inspiring and sustainable solutions for housing in the future as they take you through their homes and lifestyles.
Taste Hunters Season 1
From sustainable architecture, Shelter takes a deep dive into the rapidly developing world of sustainable agriculture with Taste Hunters. This 15-part series profiles the innovative and participative projects aiming to create better food bowls for the future. As it travels across the world, Taste Hunters meets the people fighting for more sustainable production of our food.
Learn more about alternative production in the dramatic mountains and valleys of Scotland, the fertile Piedmont area in Northern Italy, and new initiatives in Canadian agriculture. Meet the men and women who battle the extreme conditions of the intense volcanic and geothermal soil in Iceland, and see the flourishing initiatives of the Singaporeans pushing to produce more local food and offer new ways of eating in the heart of the city.
Please visit Shelter for more information.
