Micro-interventions: Do-it-yourself (DIY) in Ottoman women’s journals and the female agents of architecture

The Ottoman women’s periodicals played a pivotal role as a conduit for the women’s movement while also offering insightful articles on house decoration. These articles discussed house artifacts, furniture, and ornaments, all the while highlighting the importance of tiny touches. Published during the early Republic period, Süs Magazine (1923–24) covered home aesthetics like its predecessors and launched an intriguing decoration campaign for women readers using do-it-yourself (DIY) applications. This article delves into the DIY literature within the magazine and examines women’s various agencies in the architectural publishing world. The article engages in a discourse about women as active participants in architecture during a time when they had no formal architectural education by critically analyzing the notion of “greatness” in terms of scale and qualitative features. The DIY guides illuminate the active involvement of women in the discipline at a smaller scale, emphasizing the necessity for diverse methodologies to unveil these nuanced interactions.