Since antiquity through to the present, architecture and the pictorial arts (paintings, photography, graphic arts) have not been rigidly separated but interrelated - the one informing the other, and establishing patterns of creation and reception. In the Classical tradition the education of the architect and artist has always stressed this relationship between the arts, although modern scholarship has too often treated them as separate disciplines. These volumes explore the history of this exchange between the arts as it emerged from classical theory into artistic and architectural practice. Issues of visual representation, perspective, allegory, site specificity, ornamentation, popular culture, memorials, urban and utopian planning, and the role of treatises, manifestos, and other theoretical writings are addressed, as well as the critical reaction to these products and practices. "The Built Surface" represents a variety of methods, approaches, and dialectical interpretations - cases where architecture informs the themes and physical space of pictures, or pictorial concerns inform the design and construction of the built environment.
The exchanges between architecture and pictures explored by these authors are found to be in all cases ideologically potent, and therefore significantly expressive of their respective social, political and intellectual histories.