Models: new stars of exhibitions

Models are becoming a regular feature of architecture exhibitions, as well as being a very useful tool for work and dialogue. We spoke to various architecture professionals to find out why they are so popular.

These small-scale physical representations of architectural projects are all the rage. In many recent architecture exhibitions, they are the main or only element on display for the public to see. They are the 3D models we have always known, but now they are tangible and highly valued. Meanwhile, printed photos and plans are losing ground or are being presented in digital format.

The exhibition Habitar España, currently at La Casa de la Arquitectura in Madrid (until April 2026), showcases 85 important works from the history of architecture in Spain over the last 50 years through models. Its curator, architect Fernanda Canales, explains to A@W that displaying projects in this way allows the physical and three-dimensional qualities of architecture to be highlighted and a project to be understood as a whole. "It appeals to the tactile qualities: they have real shadows and a fixed scale. In a world increasingly made up of images, models help to remind us of the relevance of the spatial and the corporeal. They force us to link the project—the imagination and perception—to real, concrete materials, to the existence of things that have gravitational weight, temperature, texture... Models demonstrate a commitment to the search for truth: they have a technical, creative and communicative function."

In the design phase of a building, what role does model making play today? According to Fernanda Canales, it requires a very thorough synthesis, as it demands decisions on materials, structure and proportion, and the relationship between all the parts. “It forces a panoramic, comprehensive reading, so making a model involves defining the priorities of a project in a very clear-cut way. They are not only a useful tool, but also the metabolism of creation”, she says.

Clara Solà-Morales, architect and head of exhibition design at Habitar España, considers it the most efficient way for the general public to understand built space, even in a reduced format. “Models vindicate, on different scales, what it means to inhabit. They serve to explain the relationship between the parts, between the interior and the exterior”, she points out.

The exhibition also shows how models have evolved over time. Technologies such as 3D printing and laser cutting have been added to classic materials such as wood, foam board and paper. More personal alternatives include the use of fragments of Portland cement, coloured threads and iron. In this compilation of five decades of architecture that is Habitar España, Solà-Morales points out that the models of the most recent projects also represent new issues such as how the building works, its energy efficiency, flexibility, or how the collective is constructed from intermediate spaces or vertical communication cores in residential buildings.

For architect Marina Povedano, from the PostLike team, together with Arnau Pascual, Laura Solsona and Eduard Fernández, the current revaluation is based on the communicative capacity of models, due to their three-dimensionality and the inclusion of materials, textures and colours, which facilitate necessary discussions with clients. “And, of course”, she emphasises, “it is a reaction to an increasingly digital architecture that avoids playfulness. Whereas architects used to play with pencil and paper, now we play more with models, adding or removing elements. BIM does not allow for as much play, because its logic is that of productivity. The model is surely the last refuge of play that we have left."

The PostLike team opted for models when curating the exhibition Nameless Models, as part of the 1st Biennial of Young Architecture in Catalonia in 2023, which later travelled to Madrid. It then ended up in Berlin, expanded as Panorama Barcelona: Post-textual practices in a local context. It will soon be on display at Mextrópoli, Mexico. The exhibition brings together the work of architecture professionals under the age of 40.

Povedano specifies that this is a generation that works mainly in renovations, refurbishments and extensions. This is due to social, economic and environmental awareness. "Few have done new work, either because they cannot afford to or because they do not want to. The younger generations are increasingly aware that what needs to be done now is renovation. To improve what already exists, which is a lot. The plan makes it difficult for the client to imagine a renovation.”

She points out how the model makes it easier to understand the new space created after the architectural intervention, to imagine yourself inside: “It allows you to distinguish what stays, what is new and what goes. It is a much richer language in the dialogue about the architectural project. And much more accessible to the client."

According to Marina Povedano “few studios use them simply to show them at the end of the project. Models are part of the work, they are not so much an exhibition piece. The ones we exhibit are, of course, beautiful. But they have served to dialogue with clients, sometimes to convince them. Models are always useful.”

At the Twobo architecture studio in Barcelona (formed by Pablo Twose, María Pancorbo and Alberto Twose), the model is an irreplaceable part of the architectural creation process. "It plays a role that has to do with how the hand thinks, which is different from how it thinks in front of a computer or a sheet of paper. It also allows for a more intuitive understanding of scale. 3D programmes and their powerful rendering engines quickly lead us to preciousness: materials appear with their textures and reflections too soon."

For this architecture team, the material will come later, in the actual construction, with its true reflection and authentic feel. “Anticipating everything is, in a way, emptying our profession of meaning”, they argue. "If clients ask for a rendering before we understand the project, we are giving in to a language that has more to do with Pinterest than with our day-to-day work. The hand, on the other hand, hesitates. And in that hesitation, sometimes mistakes or discoveries arise that are worth keeping. The model delays decisions, prolongs the game—and ultimately, that's what it's all about. Perhaps that's why it's related to children's games."

All the architects consulted agree that the digitally constructed image is always partial and has little to do with the reality in which we will live once the project is finished. "By exhibiting models, we aim to highlight and vindicate the importance of understanding a renovation or project as a whole. Because it cannot and should not be understood as separate pieces, as magnificent isolated details, but as part of a whole. Almost in the most Renaissance sense”, Marina Povedano elaborates.

In contrast to renderings, with their great precision and finished images, which nevertheless show the project in fragments, Solà-Morales sees the model as an optimal tool for abstraction, for defining the overall spatial proposal. “The work of architecture is to make proposals. In the model there is a synthesis. There is important information," he emphasises. For Fernanda Canales, the revaluation of the model is due to ‘weariness with the abuse of fast images, visual traps, and visions made up of fragments. Models provide a more comprehensive and less flat reading than we commonly get through screens.’

The Twobo studio associates their rise as an exhibition material with a reaction to the saturation of images in which we are immersed and at the mercy of social media. And while they believe that architecture does not belong in a museum and that to understand it you have to go to the building, walk around it, inhabit it, they also consider that reducing architecture to its image has become essential and, at the same time, exhausting.

“While their photographs circulate relentlessly, the buildings remain still, ageing slowly, and few people look at them without a screen in between. The model imposes a pause, it is not immediate. Perhaps that is its value as an exhibition object: it embodies a slower, more manual world, closer to working with your hands. In our studio at least…", they reflect.