INFO

The Manor in the Țibănești village was the home of Petre P. Carp, culture critic and statesman, Romania’s  Prime Minister during the First World War. In the night from March 2nd to March 3rd 1949 the Manor was confiscated by the state, while the rightful owner was evicted and received forced domicile in Roman, in the county of Bacău. Following the change of the political regime in 1990 the architect Șerban Sturdza, Petre P. Carp’s descendant, started the legal action for recovering the estate which rightfully belongs to his family. At that time the Manor was still well preserved, functioning as a school and later as a children’s center for vocational training (“Palatul Copiilor”). Once the legal proceedings started the local administration closed down the institution, and the building started to get vandalized and materials inside were stolen. During the same period the walls were completely clad in steel-reinforced concrete following a consolidation project initiated by the local administration.

In 2007 Șerban Sturdza set up a summer school in Țibănești with the aim of rehabilitating the manor and giving back to the estate its economic and a social life. This is how the iron workshop was born. Every year a different master blacksmith from the French organization of craftsmen “Les Compagnons du Devoir et du Tour de France” comes and produces the art materials necessary to the restoration work. The workshop also hosts an elective ironwork course for the students at the local high-school.

The documentation materials recorded between 2013 and 2017 include an archive containing videos, photos, sound, architectural plans and a virtual tour capturing the evolution of the built area, all of them arranged in the shape of an interactive application, a media library. The video archive records aspects of day-to-day life in Țibănești, activities from the summer school and the way the rehabilitation project of the manor was conceived and organized.