"Using key texts by the German architect and theorist Gottfired Semper, Mari Hvattum offers a reinterpretation of historicism, viewed both as a philosophical outlook and as an architectural problem. Hvattum focuses of Semper's two major concerns: his sensitive under-standing of the ontological significance of art and architecture, and his ambitious rendering of art and architecture as the objects of scientific investigation and prediction. Hvattum investigates the background and implications of these conflicting concerns. By examining the historicist fusion of romanticism and positivism, the book seeks to understand the nature as well as the limits of the modern dream of an architectural "method of inventing". More than an intellectual biography, Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism explores the continued influence of historicism on modern architectural discourse and practice."--Jacket.