Context

Like the entire Jiu Valley region and most postindustrial towns, Petrila is currently undergoing a process of recuperating its reason for being. Beyond resignation or predestination, two attitudes chiefly pervading the collective discourse, the town keeps on slowly shrinking as a result of a decrease in the economic activities originally determining its birth. Given this specific postindustrial context seen from a socio-economic and cultural perspective, the interventions on industrial heritage are closely linked to assuming a general programme of regeneration through culture.

T1: foundation

The reconversion of Petrila Mining Exploitation was the main goal of an initiative launched as early as 2012, bearing significance on the contemporary Romanian scene. „Petrila – The Regeneration of an Industrial Landscape. An International Architecture Workshop” was organized in the autumn of the same year at the initiative of ADERF – The Association of Romanian University and Doctoral Students in France and the Cultural Association Romanian Condition. The envisaged outcome of the workshop consisted in finding strategic development directions for the town of Petrila in relation to a scenario for the reuse of its industrial heritage – Petrila Coal Mine. The completion of this initial initiative brought about a radiography of the town and its relationship with the mine. The workshop was held again in 2013, during its second and third editions, eventually resulting in a pre-feasibility study entitled „The conservation, safeguarding and functional reconversion of the heritage valued structures within Petrila Mining Exploitation”, a preliminary phase to the inclusion of the ensemble in the National Register of Historic Monuments. During the same year, the pre-feasibility study elaborated during the urban postindustrial regeneration workshop was unanimously voted by the Petrila Local Council. Consequently, this decision of the Local Council puts pressure on the planner forcing him to modify the solution of demolition.
It is in 2014 that Petrila Coal Mine experiences the first participatory intervention: StartUp Petrila, as its name suggests, gives the start as a concrete action, a small-scale representation of the existing potential: the former pump station inside the mine is valorized by way of a publicly available temporary intervention (which became permanent in the meantime). The space remained to this day in the management of the local association Romanian Condition, whose representative is the already well known artist Ion Barbu. Also, a set of urban interventions have temporarily revived the banks of East Jiu River, separating the mine from the town. Organized by PlusMinus Association, the project takes on a concrete, real result, that is, the reconversion of a building with no patrimonial value made available by Petrila Town Hall. The initiators decided to open the building to the public through a project conceived and executed together with the town’s inhabitants, a participatory experiment implemented under the supervision of Romanian and German architects and artists. Hence, the inauguration of Pompadou Centre, a cultural centre dedicated to the inhabitants of Petrila and meant to host the community’s cultural events. In January 2015, the initiation of the official listing procedure was formally announced through a note issued by the Hunedoara County Cultural Council to the Jiu Valley National Society for Mine Closure (SNIM VJ) and Petrila Town Hall. As a result of the document, the demolition of the buildings was ceased. The same year, in August, Petrila hosted „The Industrial Heritage Days” organized by the Cultural Society Romanian Condition, ADERF and PlusMinus. During the event, the identification plaque certifying the historical monument status of Petrila Coal Mine Ensemble was unveiled; there was also a cycling tour, a workshop on refurbishing a segment of Jiu River banks and a collective dinner held on the bridge overlooking the road to the mine, an action symbolically linking the industrial ensemble to the town.