Cantacuzino Pașcanu Mansion

AUTORS: Organizer: National Heritage Institute

Partners: Municipality of Ceplenița, ACOLO Association, Iasi County Direction for Culture

Supporters: Ministry of Culture, Faculty of Architecture "G.M. Cantacuzino", S.C. Rasub S.R.L.

LOCATION: Romania, jud. Iasi, Ceplenița

The summer school at the Cantacuzino-Pascanu mansion is an endeavor dedicated to the research of the architecture of the manorial residence in the village of Ceplenița, Iasi County. The initiative aims to raise the alarm over the situation of ruined mansions, to study and propose potential solutions in response to a phenomenon that has been manifesting itself in Romania over the last three decades. The Cantacuzino-Pașcanu mansion in Ceplenița, Iași, which is now in ruins, has become a textbook case for the destruction of built heritage, unfortunately expressed in one of its most vulnerable categories, namely the residential architecture of the historical elite.

The first edition of the Summer School at the Cantacuzino-Pascanu mansion took place in 2020 and, by organizing the one in 2021, has the potential to become a recurring activity until a large-scale emergency intervention or a future restoration project is carried out. At the educational level, the two editions focused on two components dedicated to increasing attachment to authentic cultural values. The educational, non-formal component, specific to a summer school, complements the scientific approaches. Other types of studies are needed to understand the intrinsic values of both the ruined manor house and the whole complex of the manor house. These extensive studies are the subject of the practical workshops of the summer school, which have been started for three areas: monument documentation, archaeology and preventive conservation of plaster and masonry. One of the most important outcomes of the first edition of the Summer School at the Cantacuzino-Pascanu mansion was the ACOLO Association, whose members are former participants and volunteers from different fields of specialization. Their conclusion after the first edition of the School was the need for continuity and sustained work and some of them decided that they should stay in touch with what is happening in Ceplenița.

During the second edition of the Summer School at the Cantacuzino-Pascanu mansion, the ACOLO association got involved as a partner, organizing a series of workshops dedicated to the community and continuing the field study in order to identify the crafts still practiced in the area, part of the intangible heritage.

The host space of the workshops, the ruined manor house, represents today a superimposition of two spatial conceptualizations: it is inside and outside, private and public, guided in its use by its condition of historical monument, but also democratic through its accessibility. It is in this context that the members of the association set out to understand the complex relationship between the interpretation of historic architecture linked to the present by a living memory, but separated from its original functions by its state of fact. Workshops dedicated to the community, part of the 2021 Summer School program, pursued the concept of rendering: the meaning of the manor house, the social and educational functions of the manor house present in the memory of the community and the symbolic one, through an installation referring to the arches of the manor house's loggia.

The activities of the summer school at the Cantacuzino-Pascanu Manor House have shown a potential for mobilizing actors around the built heritage that makes the community look with optimism at a monument that seemed, until recently, to lack support. Events dedicated to the community and incipient craft research have a double significance: encouraging participatory interpretation of the historic ensemble's space and landscape values, and the representativeness of the ruin as a learning resource for future specialists and heritage defenders by virtue of the multitude of historical layers and overlapping meanings. These are all necessary components to be addressed and integrated for a sustainable revitalization of the manor ruins.