Advertisements as a tool of modern myths in architecture: Mimarlik journal example

Media, with its constantly changing and diversified forms, has control over social and individual practices in the Modern Age. Mass Media and modern communication tools determine the global and individual limitations about how the 'meaning' should be codified and how it should be produced and consumed. It is also possible to see the strong effect of media in the field of architecture. This research deals with Architectural periodicals as an interchanging platform of knowledge of architecture and advertisements involved in these periodicals. When new production-consumption relations emerged as a result of industrial revolution and affected society culturally, architectural periodicals gained popularity in the field of architecture at the same time. Architecture has built up its professional communications network through periodicals since 19th Century, as like as many other similar disciplines. Architectural periodicals have been used as a tool to produce and institutionalize the knowledge and culture of architecture during the historical process. Because the culture of architecture is also a field of modern visual culture, architectural periodicals have also played an important role in production and propagation of "signs" for visual culture. Consuming practices has become a dominant element of the cultural structure during modern times. In this sense, advertisements have gained importance and affected social and individual practices in a vast scale with help of mass media. It is also possible to see the impact of advertisements on the architectural practices. On the one hand, the advertisement is a phenomenon of the commercial. Since it has the power to shape the structure of social and cultural practices, it can also be evaluated as a phenomenon of culture. Advertisements have been widely involved in architectural periodicals that shape the culture of modern architecture. While architectural periodicals are leading the culture of architecture, so on producing/reproducing the code and the semantic of architecture, advertisements contribute to the production of this cultural content. As advertisements are reproducing the meaning of things and social practices, they use the myths as a system of interpretation. Social and individual interpretation structures can be shaped through generated and re-generated myths for protecting and maintaining hegemonic ideologies. It is possible to say that there is a bilateral relation between myths and advertisements. Myths, which had lost its value and power that they had in the traditional world during past eras, can continue their existence with help of advertisements. Most of the myths have emerged as a kind of narrative to answer the questions that people had been faced with during pre-historical ages. Ancient people used myths to explain natural or unnatural events they can not understand in a logical sense. Myths are accepted as unquestionable facts during these times to satisfy some needs of everyday culture and life. There are three main features of myths in the traditional world. They are sacred narratives, they belong beyond time, they all serve a social, practical function. After logic and science came to the fore and natural habits started to gain a logical meaning with help of science, human-being started to separate myths from historical facts. Even though myths started to be questioned by society, they have been modernized, fit the situation and continue their existence in other shapes. This study tries to analyze two different approaches about traditional and modern myths asserted by Lévi-Strauss ve Roland Barthes in order to understand that how the myths are used in the advertisements in the shape of text and visuals. The advertisements aim to make people consume a particular product or service, and they deliver the main message to consumers directly or indirectly as in the form of connotations. The hegemony of usage of modern myths can be read in these connotations. The connotations, so the myths, overlaps audience's cultural backgrounds and beliefs and redefines these backgrounds and beliefs. Modern myths also exist in the architectural advertisements, and they manipulate the paradigms of architecture, effects professional practices with legitimating hegemonic ideologies. In this context, it is important to understand modern myths for deciphering their impacts on social value systems. This study evaluates advertisements in the architectural periodicals as a specialized form of media and the phenomenon of myths as a system of interpretation. It questions that how advertisements are using the myth with relating them to the culture of architecture. "Mimarlik Dergisi" is one of the most popular Architectural Periodical in Turkey which has been published since 1963 by Chamber of Turkish Architects. To find an answer to the previous core question, advertisement pages in this periodical will be analyzed with the methods of semiology. The advertisements involved in this periodical and modern myths in the advertisements involved in it examined by using the methods of semiology. Firstly, the limitations were determined for the case study to analyze the semiological features and formats of advertisements in this periodical. For this purpose, thirty (30) different advertisements of materials and services involved in the periodicals which published between the year of 1963-2015 are selected. This selection was made based on the variety of content, and the advertisements are smaller than one page did not include in this study. A classification has been made depending on the "signs" that directly belongs to the field of architecture. In the context of the study, these signs are categorized as "architect", "architectural product (building)" and "technical drawing, drawing". Roland Barthes's theory of semiotics has been used as a method to analyze the determined advertisements. As the architectural advertisements itself are the signs, any kind of visual and textual component that creates the advertisement can be defined as signifiers. The signifiers accepted as the mediators for tangible components which delivers the main message behind the advertisement. Myths emerge as the embedded concepts that aimed to be signified and delivered by those tangible components of the advertisement. Once the signifiers were determined in the selected advertisements, I tried to identify the mythical elements through searching for connotations that the signifiers provide to the audiences. Since those elements depend on the background and beliefs of the audience, the audience becomes an important part of this relation. In this case, the target audiences of this specific architectural periodical are the architects, the audiences that will relate with connotations and help the production of meaning of the advertisements become the same people. Because of that, those advertisements were evaluated as looking from the eye of an architect. The result of these analysis presented as graphics and charts that demonstrate the intensity of mythical phenomenon infiltrated to the culture of architecture. These outcomes helped to answer next questions. What type of advertisement are involved in architectural periodicals? How are these advertisements contribute to the epistemology of architecture? Do they change the semantic or notion of architecture? The analysis proved that the modern myths have become a part of those advertisements, and this shows how the culture of architecture have a cyclic relationship with hegemonic ideologies. The advertisements which examined in this study are products that are mostly the result of heavy industrial production processes. Advertisements have been designed to transform these heavy products into the objects of desire for a particular professional community. While doing that, advertisements focus and refers to the cultural memories, professional practices, knowledge, history and experiences of this particular professional group. During this process, selected concepts come together with the specific audience through connotations. This process defines a ground for an exchange which allows to reproduce of this selected concepts derived from the cultural entity of architecture. Reproduction of the architectural ideas by myths leads to re-organization of this ideas as new belief systems in the cultural field of architecture. As a result, cultural codes, meaning systems, symbols, and signs of architectural ideology tend to change by other dominant ideological structures such as capitalism and consumerism. In this sense, it is possible to define advertisements as a fertile ground of exchange between the domain of architecture and the dominant ideological structures. Undoubtedly, modern myths play a significant role on this ground of exchange. To conclude thesis aims to reveal that significant role of modern myths in architecture.