Sandcastle towns in Israel, a greenhouse that looks like a snowflake, and the future of utopian tourism in North Korea. Curator Rem Koolhaas asked the national pavilions at this year's Venice Biennale to tackle their ideas of 'modernity'. Here are 10 of the best

Arctic Poppy Orangery, a greenhouse shaped like a snowflake in Antarctica. Photograph: Robert Schwarz

Not content with curating the grand central pavilion of the Venice Biennale, along with the 300m-long rope factory of the Arsenale, and compiling a 2,000-page book to go with it, the director of this year's architecture exhibition, Rem Koolhaas, has for the first time taken on the role of coordinating the 65 national pavilions.

"We wanted to find out to what extent this perceived idea of the flattening of architectural culture through globalisation is actually the case," he says, explaining the thinking behind the brief with which every curator was charged: Absorbing Modernity, 1914–2014. "We didn't necessarily mean 'absorbing' as a happy thing," he adds. "It is more like the way a boxer absorbs a blow from his enemy."

Together, the national contributions show how the idea of a generic modernity, the supposed "international style", in fact mutated into very specific national variants, teasing out stories of countries battling, embracing and absorbing modernity over the last century. Here are the top 10 highlights.

Belgium – Interiors. Notes and Figures

Celebrating the humble home ... the Belgium pavilion. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Curators: Sébastien Martinez Barat, Bernard Dubois, Sarah Levy, Judith Wielander
A simple white dado rail skirts the edge of one room, branching off to form the silhouettes of a line of chairs pushed against the wall. On the other side of the gallery stands a mute, white row of fridge-freezers, while a white tiled floor is sliced at an angle across the space. These minimalist ghosts are a celebration of the humble home, and the little-documented modifications we make to our households. "Counter to the notion of modernity as an all-consuming phenomenon," say the curators, the youngest of the bunch aged 30, "a study of our everyday interiors reveals a vernacular architecture in which it seems that modernity itself is being consumed and absorbed." 
In a nutshell: John Pawson does Ikea

Korea – Crow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsular

Bombastic ... the Korea pavilion. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Curator: Minsuk Cho
"There cannot and should not be a modern form of architecture that is devoid of national characteristics," declared Kim Jong-Il in 1991 – a statement all too graphically shown in this brilliant exhibition, which brings together work from the North and South of this troubled peninsular for the first time. A densely packed show, full of thrilling models of concrete megastructures, bombastic nationalist fortresses, intricate studies of the border condition, and beautiful photography, it brings architecture into focus as a source of shared cultural values between the two sides. The standout highlight is the room curated by Nick Bonner, titled Utopian Tours, a collection of paintings by North Korean artists and architects depicting fantastical visions for the future of tourism, alongside linocuts and posters from the 1950s that embody the importance of architecture in the construction of this self-proclaimed utopian society.
In a nutshell: Megastructural utopianism...Continue Reading

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