Concrete sprouts and unfinished urban dreams

When you travel in Turkey, especially in metropolitan cities like Istanbul and specifically in the suburbs, you will most likely encounter iron rods springing from concrete columns. These are not always on the ground or in the foundation, but on the rooftops of one or multi-story buildings. These bars, called starter bars, are normally used to reinforce concrete in the foundations of new buildings and to provide structural support and strength when connecting different elements in buildings. The Turkish term for the starter bar is beton filizi, literally translated as concrete sprout. This is not an accidental neologism, since concrete sprout means much more than being a reinforcement or providing structural support in the context of urbanism in Turkey. These iron and steel rods reaching out to the skies are the veins of hope, signifiers of architectural possibilities, and monuments of unfinished urban dreams intentionally left open. This article delves into the history of concrete sprouts in Istanbul, an interconnected story of mid-century urbanisation, the Marshall Plan, domestic migration, informal urban transformation, and political opportunism.