This year's Venice Architecture Biennale is bursting with models, including several you can touch or inhabit. Dezeen's social media editor Danil Boparai picks 10 of the best examples.
Curated by Grafton Architects founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale is open to the public until 27 November 2018. It is titled Freespace, in celebration of the gifts that architects offer the public for free through their designs.
Many of the participants in the exhibition have chosen to explore this theme by constructing full-scale mockups of parts of their buildings. This has resulted in an array of interactive installations, from a canopy you stick your head into, to a nook you can clamber inside.
Here's our guide to the top 10:
Recasting
Alison Brooks
London architect Alison Brooks has built four different "inhabitable" totems inside the Arsenale, each designed to offer a different experience of light and volume. One contains a staircase, while another is lined with concealed mirrors.
Liquid Light
Flores & Prats
Spanish studio Flores & Prats has attempted to recreate a beam of sunlight from its Sala Beckett theatre conversion in Barcelona, by reconstructing part of the space around a window inside the Arsenale. A bench creates a space for visitors to sit and enjoy the light as it changes across the day.
项目名称：动态理念（Notion of Motion）
设计者：Matharoo Associates
Notion of Motion
Matharoo Associates
This imposing metal structure is a rework of a steel house completed by Matharoo Associates in New Delhi. Visitors are invited to climb up onto its surfaces, to see how its mirrored surfaces create the illusion of large space.
Elevation
Andra Matin
Indonesian architect Andra Matin is showcasing his work inside a boxy structure with an impressive woven facade. Inside, you climb up and down staircases, while being presented with a range of smaller-scale models.
项目名称：折叠景观/东与西（Folding Landscape/East and West）
设计者：O'Donnell + Tuomey
Folding Landscape/East and West
O'Donnell + Tuomey
Irish firm O'Donnell + Tuomey has built a "Siamese twin form" that merges elements of two projects – a completed civic space in Ireland and a competition entry for China. It integrates a series of pathways, so visitors can climb over it in a number of ways.
Field
Aires Mateus
Portuguese studio Aires Mateus invites biennale visitors to stick their heads inside this metal form raised up on stilts. Inside, it contains greenery that offers a distinctive smell.
项目名称：Zoí
设计者：Kere Architecture
Diébédo Francis Kéré向公众展示了一个巨大的休息空间，该项目是其为柏林曾经的滕伯尔霍夫中央机场而设计，而目前这里主要用作难民营。建筑师的目标是为人们提供社区空间，在这里，居民们能够舒适地相互交流。
Zoí
Kere Architecture
Diébédo Francis Kéré is showcasing a lounge structure he designed for Berlin's former Tempelhof Airport, which is currently being used as a refugee centre. His aim is to provider social spaces where the community can interact with one another in comfort.
项目名称：自建项目如何满足规范（How to Legalise Spontaneously Built Illegal Structures）
设计者：业余建筑工作室
How to Legalise Spontaneously Built Illegal Structures
Amateur Architecture Studio
Over in the Central Pavilion, the Wang Shu-led Amateur Architecture Studio is showing a prototype of a "gap space" – a type of illegal structure that often pops up in China's urban villages, and which the studio believes could offer new opportunities.
Oxymoron
Saurbruch Hutton
This vibrant installation by German architects Saurbruch Hutton shows an abstract take on the colourful M9 Museum, a proposal by Berlin studio Saurbruch Hutton. Inside, visitors are invited to sit down and take in a series of black and white photographs of the site's heritage.
项目名称：Moya水源上方的保护屋面（Protective Roof over Moya Spring Water Source）
设计者：Jensen & Skodvin
Protective Roof over Moya Spring Water Source
Jensen & Skodvin
Jensen and Skodvin's metal structure gives visitors the chance to walk under a scaled-down reconstruction of a canopy the studio designed for a waterway in a Chinese forest. Visitors are invited to walk down the centre of the model and see the shelter from underneath.
