Wooden Churches from Banat Crivina de Sus village

Initiated as a project meant to rehabilitate and confer another life to a historical monument on a real and symbolical level (the wooden church from Crivina de Sus, Timis county), Wooden Churches from Banat organically reoriented itself, from focusing only on the monument, to focusing on the community the church happened to belonged to and moreover, on the cultural landscape that includes both monument and community. Andropedagogy became one of our important goals, educating adults on how to manage the architectural heritage. A first step was to provoke them narrate about it, hence to re-invigorate local narrations and create a topic within the community, without making an awareness campaign. Changing the discussions of daily life from how to deal with the hay, the plums or the cattles to how to engage into saving the monument was not necessarily successful but was a means of trying to adjust perspectives and de-focalise the community from the quotidian to their past (from dealing with the present to dealing with the past), and trying to re-link them with the monument in a postmodernist architectural interpretation.

Managing change is an important aspect of community development; therefore the project proposes itself to accustom people with change. Changing perspective on the monument, changing perspective on the potential of the monument (economic, touristic, social etc), and changing their way of dealing with the crops by not using additives, practicing organic agriculture, using the results and entering the full-market of cheap and non-biological products is an on-going and long term process. On the other hand, we also focused on pedagogy, getting youngsters of the community to be aware and to value the monument (by means of presentations, classes with children of the community, discussions with adolescents), hence to ensure that the future generation will properly guard and valorize their inheritance. Another type of education that we have aimed at was preparing with non-formal means future specialists in heritage studies, offering students from various domains (landscape architecture, architecture, cultural studies, ethnology) a reach to how a project develops itself, by organizing annual summer camps (open workshops) during which specialists-to-be can get an inside on both traditional architecture and arts and crafts but also on a method we are trying to implement: of approaching and studying the cultural heritage and landscape in a non-invasive, observant and empathic way. We intend to prepare both community and young specialists with dealing with an all-changing living heritage, which they have to guard and transmit over, with as less interventions as possible.

Authors: Alexandru Ciobotă, Raluca Rusu, Vladimir Obradovici, Nicoleta Mușat, Diana Belci, Alexandru Buftea, Ariana Țuțuianu, Sorin Silaghi, Mihai Moldovan, Maria Sbera, Ioana Hariga, Bogdan Gogoci, Alina Adăscăliței, Andrei Condoroș, Milena Popa (interdisciplinary
Photo Credit: Photo 1,2,3 Ovidiu Micsa, Photo 4 Cristina Garabeteanu, Photo 5,6,7 Vladimir Obradivici, Photo 8 Alina Adascalitei
Country: Romania