The Technical Museum’s collection was first opened to the public in September 1910 at the Schwarzenberg Palace in the Hradčany quarter of Prague. This included exhibits from the Civil Engineering field. The architecture exhibit wasn’t opened until seven years later, in 1917. During the German occupation, the architecture and Civil Engineering collections were moved to the Invalidovna building in Karlín.
The systematic care of the collections and their more methodical recording began only in 1942 when, thanks to the efforts of art historian Zdeněk Wirth and architect Ladislav Machoň, the Archive of Architectural Work was founded.  The record cards from that time remain preserved as do many of the archiving principles.
 

 Although most of the NTM’s collection was moved in the early 1950s to the new functionalist building at Letná in Prague, the collections of architecture and Civil Engineering remained in the confined, and climatically and technologically less ideal spaces of Invalidovna. Moreover, the spaces for the growing collections were markedly reduced starting in the mid 1950s and through the forced ceding of part of the building to the Military Historical Institute. Despite the inconvenient facilities, the archive served the public and for exhibition purposes.

 The 2002 flood damaged over 80% of the materials stored at the Invalidovna building in Karlín. Most of the valuable archive documents were saved and are now stored in high-quality climate-controlled depositories. The Czech Ministry of Culture, the SOS Architecture Archive, the Memory Bridge and other donors such as the Hlavka Foundation contributed to the drying and restoring of archive documents.