Potential for popular dissemination: an analysis of the "ideal home" discourse in the weekly Yedigün magazine

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2006
Tuncer, Melike Usalp
The social transformations beginning by the end of the nineteenth century and the political and economic changes of the Early Republican Era (1923-1938) and the Transition Era (1938-1950) had important effects on Turkish architecture. The effects of the ‘new’ and ‘ideal’ life accelerated by the establishment of the new democratic nation state brought rapid changes and transformations to all aspects of life including housing. This study deals with the housing discourse in Yedigün magazine which was published weekly during the single party era of the Republic. It was published weekly from 1933 to 1950 and was followed by a wide portion of the society, as an important popular magazine of the era. Its effort to present articles, pictures and news on housing and decoration for 17 years, with only short interruptions, makes it necessary to investigate these popular architectural products. In this study, it is claimed that the visual and the written material of Yedigün magazine, related to house, is part of the theme of what is called ‘ideal home’. The investigation and analysis of the ‘ideal home’ 2 discourse in Yedigün magazine as a whole is useful in improving one’s understanding of the modernization practices of the newly established Republic of Turkey. Two methods are used in order to understand the visual and written materials in the magazine: the first one is the Visual Analysis Method described in the book ‘Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Analysis’ by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leuween. The aim by using this method is to decipher the relationship of the representative medium with the reader, treat the material as a whole. The second method is the analysis of the whole material in the context in relation with the architectural, political, social and economical events of the period, to investigate the construction processes of the discourse. Therefore, this study aims at understanding the action-reaction potential of the tools of the ‘ideal home’ discourse of the Yedigün magazine, by deciphering the visual and written material. Some results of the thesis show us that; both Arkitekt and Yedigün magazines follow the agenda of the foreign publications in a similar way; the foundation for a sort of ‘collective union’ namely ‘housing cooperatives’ was set, by keeping individual home acquisition constantly on the agenda; problems of the “new” and “modern life” were tried to be addressed by Yedigün as well as in the current architectural publications; these home presentations may be judged as ‘a catalogue of idealized ideas’ or ‘two dimensional advice manual’, for early Republican Era home icons.

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Citation Formats
M. U. Tuncer, “Potential for popular dissemination: an analysis of the “ideal home” discourse in the weekly Yedigün magazine,” M.Arch. - Master of Architecture, Middle East Technical University, 2006.