The Model as Performance Generally, the architectural model is thought of as an expression of material exploration and experimentation, utopian ideas and speculative construction. Together with drawing, the model is the designer’s main communication tool, and typically, the scaled-down model invites the viewer to look but forbids entry. The space that the scaled-down model suggests through abstraction and representation cannot be ‘felt’ (Merleau-Ponty), the full scale inhabitable model on the other hand elicits affective responses. And while the ‘space physicality’ (Husserl) of the 1:1 model remains a simulation, its potential for inhabitation makes it a temporary ‘home’ and the model space a strategically staged interior. The 1:1 model asks from the viewer to become a co-actor in the making of the model space, in the process completing a site-specific performative environment where exteriority and visuality are no longer privileged over interiority and haptic sense. This paper interrogates the 1:1 model as a performance of inhabitation and looks at the role of the full scale model in architecture exhibitions, ranging from Mies van der Rohe’s 1927 and 1931 exhibitions, The Dwelling and The Dwelling of Our Time respectively to contemporary examples. Key Words: architectural model, architectural doppelganger, exhibition, interio