Some time ago a university professor wondered about the usefulness that a Museum of Architecture could have, reasoning that the true museums of architecture are found on the street. Although this may be true, what should be done with all the previous study and analysis material that helps to understand the building in its entirety? Where would the magnificent models made for the construction of a building that a once the novelty has passed, can they be consumed by flames or disappearance? What would become of the many unrealized projects that can even now have a topicality worthy of praise?... The rest of the so-called major arts, sculpture and painting, have physical spaces and material conditions to carry out the tasks that are specific to them, the same happens with architecture. Now, no one questions that sculpture and painting have their memory in spaces previously prepared for their location, why question it with architecture?.

This is the first monographic study at an international level carried out on architectural museums. The author's stay for several years, in the centers analyzed in the book, in countries such as: Germany, France, Canada, Holland or the United States, serves to make known with rigor and depth the international phenomenon of Museums and Archives. of Architecture, especially fashionable after the creation in 1979 of the ICAM (International Confederation of Architectural Museums).