The Roots of Architectural Invention is a study in the history and theory of architecture. Challenging the contemporary concentration on style, it argues that site, enclosure, and materials are fundamental elements in sound architectural design. Each of the chapters in this study reviews and criticizes current assumptions and then provides an analysis of historical texts, by such theoreticians as L.B. Alberti, G. Semper, A. Loos, and Le Corbusier, insofar as they illuminate current thinking. Considerable discussion is also devoted to significant buildings, both modern and historical, that provide the basis for the author's argument.

Outlining topical thinking in architecture, with reference to rhetoric and the art of memory, The Roots of Architectural Invention defines architecture as a form of representation that is caught up in the temporal unfolding of human events.