The exhibition At the Ground Floor of the City by Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) is the first presentation of an extensive planning project of the French group in Germany that includes user participation. AAA often works with models of temporary and flexible architecture. Künstlerhaus exhibits a series of videos and diagrammatic drawings that document the project Ecobox. The focus of the presentation is on diverse uses of the project that repeatedly altered the constructed structures. The project was documented within a long-term video documentary that enables a study of the experimental dynamics of the project.

Since 2001, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) initiated a number of self-organized projects in the district La Chapelle at Paris that aimed at accessing unused or rarely used spaces. The project suggested a flexible use of space in order to enable a diversity of lifestyles and ways of life. The project Ecobox contained a temporary garden that was created and used between 2002 and 2004. In summer 2005, the garden was removed and shifted to another place, an unused estate nearby. Easy forms of constructing allowed an integration of many helping hands. A number of modules were realized by AAA in collaboration with neighbors (kitchen, workbench, radio station, library, water storage tanks). The project has become a platform for critical planning discourses and integrates activities on a local and transnational level. Since autumn 2005, Ecobox is used by an action group.

Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) is a collective platform that realizes actions and research on transformation of urban space as well as cultural, social and political micro practice. The interdisciplinary group was formed in 2001 in Paris. AAA recently published the anthology Urban Act, a handbook for “do-it-yourself urbanism” (in collaboration with PEPRAV, European Platform for Alternative Practice and Research on the City).