Architecture and Image: The Example of Turkey

Since the 1980s, through the creation of image-dependent products, the advertising industry in metropolitan areas of Turkey has followed new tastes by manufacturing collective identities promising ‘a different lifestyle‘. This has been achieved by promoting either images of past (historical) forms or of different cultures and claiming that these images represent a better future in the social network of consumption. This article presents an historical perspective on the transformation of Turkish architecture in the postmodern from an historical and cultural representation of society to the ‘ordinary‘ and the ‘cliched‘. Now buildings are made to appear ‘historical‘ in an attempt to look different. Architecture turns into making an image that is easy to exchange, buy and sell.