We promised in 2024, after the pilot edition of Street Delivery and UrbanEye Film Festival in Reșița, dedicated to the Fantastic Funicular, that we would gather again around an "F". And that's exactly what we did: we gathered around the last blast furnace in Reșița.

Blast furnace no. 2 is among the most imposing and remarkable industrial heritage constructions in the Montan Banat region; not only because it is one of the last blast furnaces preserved in the country, a survivor of demolitions and scrap metal "valorizations", but also because it is a class A historical heritage monument. All these achievements are the result of the efforts of the last generation of plant employees, of people passionate about industrial heritage, and of individuals in key institutional positions.

However, it is important to state that, just as almost any historical remnant can be contested—and it's natural for it to be so—the blast furnace, too, "for some Reșița residents, is just a relic that seems to belong definitively to the past." (Ana Schlupp, executive director FCBM) Nothing unusual; besides bringing glory to the city and the country, industry has always meant a high cost for people's health and natural resources, and for some, the past can very well remain a closed chapter.

So, how can we think about the future of the blast furnace? What happens with the contrasting views and positions, and how do they intertwine in Reșița's development? What makes sense for the future, and what can be let go? How far does the need of a community and a city go to preserve a blast furnace as a legally protected heritage object? How much is real need, and how much is idealization and mystification? How much is driven by the ambition of industrial architecture enthusiasts? Can they coexist?

These are legitimate and human questions, which go beyond urban regeneration, and which may never find an answer agreed upon by everyone. These are questions for which the blast furnace is worth awakening, even if only for a weekend, to see what this place has to say and what the people who knew it have to tell. We have thus created the framework for a collective exercise of reflection, debate, learning about the blast furnace's history, and exploring its heritage potential for the community and the city, intertwined with the current activity of the industrial site on which it is located. We proposed various formats for community activation and dialogue between two major categories of specialists: the city's inhabitants—its true storytellers—and professionals in architecture and urban regeneration.

We opened the event with a press conference and a round table, attended by various stakeholders interested in the blast furnace's fate, including representatives from the city hall, the county council, Artrom Steel Tubes, the National Heritage Institute, the Order of Architects, and the County Directorate for Culture, as well as architects and heritage specialists. We discussed what can be concretely done, how the blast furnace can be relevant to the community, and how each of those present can contribute. It is clear that we need to arm ourselves with a lot of patience. We saw this in the case of the funicular, whose conversion has been discussed for over 10 years, as well as from the experiences of other countries visited in our program.

We continued with "Open Doors at the Blast Furnace," a unique event, a first for the Reșița community and visitors—the electric furnace and continuous casting were almost as impressive as the stories of the employees and the Reșița residents who know well the lives the blast furnace has gone through (and who used to bathe in the water cooling tower). We thank Artrom Steel company for their openness, availability, and generosity in sharing their activities and the "secrets" of the blast furnace.

The first evening began with a "fire show," created by the Oral History Group. It was an interdisciplinary evening dedicated to the community and local history, combining stories of plant workers with impromptu industrial poetry, theater, and performative readings, carried out in collaboration with former blast furnace workers, their descendants, local artists, and actors from the Western Theater.

On Saturday morning, we walked through the historical heart of the blast furnaces, together with Maja Bâldea and Andrei Bălbărău (with valuable additions from Andrei Szabo, from Euroland Banat) to understand how the blast furnaces and the city's life have always influenced each other, creating a unique and complex socio-cultural fabric.

Public space interventions took place throughout the week, intensifying during the weekend of August 1–3, animating not only the blast furnace area but also the Școala Pittner Cultural Center, a revitalized heritage building recently opened. It was no coincidence that the entire event took place near the school—a space that historically served all segments of the population, and Școala Pittner has a special history of openness to the surrounding community (more here https://scoalapittner.ro/istoric/)

The event, co-organized with the Banatul Montan Community Foundation, was complemented by stands and community interventions by partners such as the Volunteer Center and Nevo Parudimos, Fundația 9, and teaching staff from the Științescu Banatul Montan program. Other Reșița volunteers mobilized and were present with bicycle repair workshops, a chess tournament, participatory painting (the collective painting was a great success!), and photographic art. The community meal, prepared together with volunteers from Reșița, Fundația9, and Marii Mici Uzoni, was a great opportunity to share a meal with neighbors from Furnalelor Street and the surrounding area, but not only, amidst the smell of barbecue and a backdrop of good cheer and neighborhood buzz. It was a lively event, where meeting and dialogue happened naturally, without a specific purpose or theme.

The public debates brought together architects and community members involved in the classification or preservation of the blast furnace, making the discussion about the blast furnace accessible and open, as it should be. In parallel, two important initiatives took place: a photography exhibition that integrated both memories collected by the Oral History Group and the historical architectural study of the blast furnace, carried out by architect Gabriela Domokos-Pașcu and architect Maja Bâldea. Archival photographs were gathered from the collections of remarkable photographers of Reșița's industry, such as Ioan Mato and Aurel Săndulescu (digitized and interpreted by the Amateur Filmmaker Museum), or from recent series, taken by Alexandru Todirică and Xplorate Group.

You can see the entire exhibition on the website muzeulvirtualresita.ro, HERE.

A week before the event, the architecture summer school organized by MKBT together with the Non-Formal Spatial Planning Workshop began, where students and practitioners worked with maps, models, and 3D scans, guided, among others, by the big questions mentioned above. Under the guidance of an interdisciplinary team* of specialists in architecture, urbanism, design, anthropology, and local and community development, participants sought answers in the form of functional conversion scenarios for the blast furnace, at several scales of intervention: 1) the macro scale, at the city level (the blast furnace in relation to the urban context), 2) the intermediate scale (the blast furnace in relation to the industrial site), 3) the micro scale, at the level of the architectural object (the blast furnace in relation to the community's needs and expectations in the contemporary context). The proposed revitalization scenarios show how creative and courageous work with industrial heritage can be and open up new possible lives for the blast furnace from now on (we will definitely return with documentation of these scenarios). And so as not to leave out other interveners, you will also see among the photographs the children's ideas about what the blast furnace's new life could look like.

The UrbanEye Film Festival completed the range of formats and interventions with documentary film screenings dedicated to heritage and urban transformations, participatory workshops for children and young people (with De-a Arhitectura), a performance created with children (with pianist Adriana Toacsen), and participatory landscaping: community consultation on options for arranging the viewpoint towards the blast furnace from the Rânduri 1 area.

And all of this was savored and read at leisure by those present, in the first edition of the newspaper "City, People, and Industry," which we will continue in future editions.

What happens next?

Perhaps, once the architects, stands, and tourists have left Furnalelor Street, the expectation will be for the blast furnace to return to its deep slumber. However, we believe that the effervescence created on Furnalelor Street will not be easily forgotten; the scenarios of the summer school participants cannot remain without an echo. Surely there will be people who will wonder: what will happen to the blast furnace from now on? While we prepare with plans for the next steps, we hope that this simple question will at least keep the fire of curiosity alive.

More photos can be found in the album on our Facebook page.

The professional photographs were taken with great patience and attention by Mihai Butănescu. The rest of the photographs were taken amateurishly by the organizing colleagues. 🙂

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"Let's Awaken the Blast Furnace!" was an event organized by the Make Better Association and the Art in Dialogue Association, along with partners Amateur Filmmaker Museum, Banatul Montan Community Foundation, Școala Pittner Cultural Center, Non-Formal Spatial Planning Workshop, LittleImpro Association, Encore Association, De-a Arhitectura Association, Dash Film SRL, Fundația9, Nevo Parudimos, with the support of the Reșița City Hall and Artrom Steel Tubes. The media partners of the event are TVR Timișoara, Banat Media, Radio România Timișoara, Radio Reșița, Scena 9, Zeppelin, IQads, RFI România.

The project "Gathering around the last blast furnace." is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration and the Reșița City Hall, and organized under the umbrella of Reșița 250 Lab—the urban innovation laboratory initiated in 2023 by MKBT, which acts as a catalyst for a co-creation, testing, and implementation ecosystem for urban regeneration actions in Reșița.

The UrbanEye Film Festival 2025—the second edition in Reșița is a project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration, the Order of Architects of Romania, through the architecture stamp, and the Reșița City Hall.

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The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the project's content or how the project's results may be used. These are the sole responsibility of the funding beneficiary.