The first International Architectural Model Festival was put on show in Budapest by KÉK in 2008. The theme of the exhibition focusing on tender models inspired 60 offices from 20 countries to participate in this large scale event organized in KÉK’s centre at Servita square.
The 2010 Architectural Model Festival investigated the relationship of designer practices and cultural infrastructure. Museums and art institutions have been at the forefront of recent urban development programs, establishing new nodes in the global network of cities. This trend has also shifted the role of such establishments from sites representing static national and local identities to open and activist public platforms inviting discourses on the cultures and identities of modern democracies. The main topics of the festival explored this process through introducing current issues of Hungarian institutions and their architecture, and by raising internationally new, so far undeveloped issues. These themes also developed links between shared discourses of the architectural model as a genre and the museum as a platform.
The third architectural model festival focused on the rarely accessible 1:500 wooden scale model of Budapest. KÉK has made the city model accessible to 3000 visitors. The theme of the festival looked at the role of modeling in thinking about urbanity. While architectural models generally represent spatial concepts, modeling in urban design has also been used in innovative ways to understand processes, data and change. The 2013 edition thus looked at modeling at different scales and in various media to reveal how cities work and to help designers and city dwellers work together in shaping urban spaces and processes.
