Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée, Paris

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée is a collective of architects, designers and social scientists who transform urban spaces through collaborative, localized endeavors. Founded by Franco-Romanian architects Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu in 2001, AAA has become an engine for engaging citizens in shaping their own cities through building, farming and artistic intervention. AAA acts as a creative instigator, empowering local communities to carry out and sustain their own ideas for urban regeneration.

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu founded Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) in 2001 as a platform for experimentation and renewal of derelict urban space. With an ever-evolving cast of collaborators, including architects, designers, social scientists, artists and activists, the design collective stages creative urban interventions, inviting residents to participate in transforming their own cities.

Both Petcou and Petrescu studied architecture in their native Romania before pursuing graduate degrees in the social sciences in France. Today Petrescu is a professor of Architecture and Design Activism at the University of Sheffield, and Petcou has taught at the Ecole d’Architecture Paris Malaquais, but their collaborations span the globe.

Whether establishing a community hub in a pass-through between buildings, or planting a vegetable garden at the base of a highrise, all of AAA’s projects share the common goal of promoting urban resilience by empowering citizens to take charge of their environment. Petcou and Petrescu compare the process to a plant rhizome—their design concepts form the root, and ideas propagate and come to life in the hands of local collaborators who soon take over the running of the process.

Following from this notion, the team launched a project called Rhyzom that started with a survey of models of sustainable community living around Europe. After mapping examples of co-housing, small-scale agriculture and cottage industry, they translated their observations into the seeds of new collaborations, leading workshops in green roof design, rainwater collection systems, waste recycling, food growing, and hand crafts.

Taking their findings further, AAA is developing R-Urban, a prototype for sustainable city life on the outskirts of Paris. In the working-class suburb of Colombes, Petcou, Petrescu and their team are creating a living laboratory for the local residents. Fortified with the support and knowledge of the designers, Colombes citizens are on a path toward producing their own food supply and recycling waste, closing the local loops of consumption and production. The multi-year plan includes ecological construction, urban agriculture, a recycling program, and cooperative housing.

Both the process and the final outcome of R-Urban serve as models for urban revitalization. From Dakar to Detroit, urban regeneration begins by building communities of citizens who believe in their own power to create change.