The history of the background of CTU in Dejvice dates back to the 1920s

Prague - The history of the facilities of the Czech Technical University (CTU) and its individual faculties in Prague's Dejvice dates back to the 1920s. This significant complex also includes the new building of the Czech Institute of Technology, Robotics, and Cybernetics (CIIRC) of CTU, which will be ceremoniously opened on Tuesday. This event will also become part of a series of ceremonial events with which CTU commemorates the 310th anniversary of its founding this year.

The oldest technical university in Central Europe was established by the decision of Emperor Joseph I, when on January 18, 1707, he granted Christian Joseph Willenberg the right to teach engineering disciplines. For the following 200 years, teaching took place in historic buildings in the center of Prague. It was not until the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918 that a decision was made to create a new university campus in Prague's Dejvice. At that time (in 1920), CTU also received its current name.

After the number of CTU students increased to seven thousand, the Czechoslovak state purchased the Dejvice land in 1923. Professor Antonín Engel from the Prague Technical University situated the campus on the outskirts of Dejvice near the Kotlářka estate.

In 1925, with the participation of then-President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Prime Minister Antonín Švehla, the foundation stone for the construction of the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering was laid. However, further continuation of construction and expansion of the campus was hindered by political events leading up to World War II.

After the Communist coup in 1948, there was no acceleration in the construction of the academic complex. More than ten years later, in 1959, the joint building for the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering began construction, which was completed in 1965. From 1962 to 1982, a series of buildings for the Faculty of Civil Engineering were constructed, significantly increasing the number of students on the campus.

Massive construction created the need to address the capacity of the dining hall. Therefore, a Technical cafeteria was built on Jugoslavian Partisans Street, but its construction was fraught with complications. The facility was definitively completed in 1973. However, after 1989, the system of catering for students and teachers changed significantly, thus the Technical cafeteria was removed from the list of dining facilities at CTU and consideration began for its further use.

From 2006 to 2008, a new building of the National Technical Library was erected in the parking lot of the Dejvice campus at a cost of over two billion crowns. In 2011, a new building for the Faculty of Architecture was also completed nearby for over one billion crowns (about 200 million was invested by the school, the rest was from the state budget).

The current rector Petr Konvalinka decided on the construction of the new CIIRC building, which also included the renovated Technical cafeteria, in 2014.