Treacherous Productions of Fantasy: Ağaoğlu Housing Commercials

Abstract

Ali Ağaoğlu is the leading figure in the construction industry in Turkey, specializing in luxury housing estates. His sales figures have reached record levels since the early 2000s, far surpassing those of other similar entrepreneurs’. While governmental policies that prioritize the development of the construction sector partially account for Ağaoğlu’s commercial success, we contend that the analysis of popular media images is essential in order to understand his estates’ popularity. Based on a close reading of his media appearances in housing commercials and interviews in the light of psychoanalytical theory, we argue that Ağaoğlu has manufactured a realizable fantasy for his clients, which structures their desires in the cultural context of consumer capitalism. However, the limits of Ağaoğlu’s fantasy world of housing were tested in an unexpected outbreak in one of his estates, where the homeowers traversed their fantasies.

Keywords:

• Ali Ağaoğlu
• commercials
• desire
• fantasy
• housing
• identification
• masculinity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gülsüm Baydar

Prof. Gülsüm Baydar received her PhD degree in architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught design, history, and theory courses at universities in the US, Singapore, Australia, and Turkey. She presently teaches in the Architecture Department at Yaşar University, İzmir. Her work lies at the intersections between architectural and other discourses including psychoanalytical, postcolonial, and feminist theories in order to explore the boundaries of the architectural discipline. Her articles have appeared in such leading journals as Assemblage, Journal of Architectural Education, Society and Space, Signs, and Gender, Place and Culture. She is the co-editor of Postcolonial Space(s) (Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) and Negotiating Domesticity (Routledge, 2005). She presently leads the Digital Humanities research group at Yaşar University and directed a related project on public housing in İzmir.

[email protected], gulsum.baydar@yas

Cansu Karakız

Cansu Karakız received her undergraduate degree in architecture from İzmir University of Economics (2013) and completed her graduate studies in the Space and [Digital] Culture program at Yaşar University, İzmir (2017). Her MSc thesis is on the effects of urban transformation in Salhane, İzmir. Following her undergraduate studies, she worked with an architectural firm in İzmir and participated in designing film sets with an independent art group in İstanbul. During her graduate studies she coordinated architectural workshops as a member of the independent Mek/An design group and assisted the preparation of an interdisciplinary funded research project. She was the principal correspondent for the 11th and 12th annual 4T International Design Conferences. Presently she is enrolled as a graduate student in the International Media Cultural Work programme at Hochschule Darmstadt, University of Applied Sciences.

[email protected]