A first step in exploring the neighbourhood
How can we better understand a neighbourhood? What do we discover when we look at it from different perspectives? How can we bring together heritage, art, urban education and community to build new forms of knowledge and new ways of relating to the city?
These questions were the starting point of Deschidem Mântuleasa, a multi-year programme that aims to turn the neighbourhood into a space for research, interdisciplinary exploration, contemporary creation and community dialogue.
On 3 and 4 October 2026 we organised the first edition, conceived as a pilot project — an exercise through which to test some of the directions of the future Mântuleasa Lab.
We started from the wish to open the neighbourhood to new forms of exploration and interaction, to bring together different people and perspectives, and to lay the foundations of a living urban monograph.
01 Opening up the neighbourhood
For two days, a stretch of Plantelor Street, between Mântuleasa and Sfântul Ștefan, was closed to traffic and became the central space of the first edition.
We saw this temporary intervention as an invitation to discover public space differently and to explore the relationship between the neighbourhood, its heritage and the people who use it.
Deschidem Mântuleasa was conceived as a programme in which urban exploration, educational activities, contemporary culture and community encounters can work together, offering complementary perspectives on the city.
The pilot edition gave us the opportunity to test this format at the scale of the neighbourhood and to identify directions for its development.
02 The city as a space for exploration and creation
Mântuleasa is an urban territory with many historical, architectural, cultural and social layers, which can be researched and interpreted from very different perspectives.
From built heritage and the memory of places to public space, everyday life, nature and the transformations of the city, the neighbourhood offers ground for interdisciplinary exploration.
This approach lies at the heart of the future Mântuleasa Lab: a programme through which students, young professionals, specialists, artists and residents will be able to take part in researching and reinterpreting the neighbourhood.
The first edition opened this process, bringing urban exploration and contemporary cultural interventions together in the same setting.
In parallel, RADAR ÎN COMUNITATE – Mântuleasa Edition, produced by One Night Gallery, proposed an encounter between historic space and digital artistic expression, completing the cultural perspective on the neighbourhood.
03 A dialogue about the neighbourhood and its future
One of the essential directions of the project is involving the community in exploring the neighbourhood and in shaping future editions.
As part of the first edition, we organised a community meeting attended by residents of the neighbourhood, alongside representatives of the creative sector, the business community and the hospitality (HoReCa) sector.
The discussion was joined by Dorothee Hasnaș and Ioana Alexe, who shared experiences and perspectives on involving local communities, organising neighbourhood events and the importance of collaboration between residents, organisations and local initiatives.
The meeting offered a first framework for dialogue on how Deschidem Mântuleasa can evolve into a project built together with the community.
We want residents and local actors to be more than participants in events: to contribute actively to defining the programme, choosing the themes and organising future editions.
04 From an experiment to a multi-year programme
Edition #0 was the beginning of a long-term process.
Through Mântuleasa Lab, we aim to develop a programme of interdisciplinary workshops, research and creation that brings together students, young professionals, specialists, artists and residents.
Taking the neighbourhood as a field of exploration, the workshops will combine urban documentation, fieldwork, artistic practice and community dialogue to produce new perspectives, interpretations and ideas about the city.
Each future edition will be able to explore a new theme: heritage, urban nature, the materials of the city, collective memory, public space, mobility, sound, communities or other dimensions of urban life.
The results will gradually be brought together in an open digital archive, including photographs, research, maps, interviews, artworks, observations and proposals for the neighbourhood.
In this way, each edition will add a new chapter to a living urban monograph, built through the contributions of those who research, inhabit and discover Mântuleasa.
05 The archive of the first edition
Photographs, documentation, artistic interventions and fragments from the activities of the pilot edition.
These materials are the first contributions to the living monograph of Mântuleasa — an archive that will keep growing with each new edition.
Thank you
The first Deschidem Mântuleasa edition was made possible by the people and organisations who believed in the project and built it together with us.
We thank the programme partners, Revista Arhitectura and the Union of Romanian Architects, with whom we are developing the cultural, educational and research dimension of the project over the long term.
We thank Imaginativo Digital Marketing, the programme sponsor, for supporting the first edition.
We thank One Night Gallery, main partner of the 2026 edition, for RADAR în Comunitate — Mântuleasa Edition, which brought new media art into the public space of the neighbourhood.
We thank the partners of the 2026 edition: ARCUB – Străzi deschise – București, Promenadă urbană, Grădina Mântuleasa, Plan Patru, Centrul Aspera, Rubrik – architecture office, Beans&Dots Mântuleasa, Ginoteca and Mosafir.
And thank you to everyone who took part, contributed and opened up Mântuleasa with us: the residents of the neighbourhood, our guests, artists, guides, volunteers and the photographers who documented these two days.
The story continues.
Deschidem Mântuleasa is an invitation to explore the city more attentively, to discover new perspectives and to help build a shared knowledge of the places where we live.
Do you have a story, a photograph, a memory or an idea about Mântuleasa?