ABSTRACT
The view that architecture is a mode of fine art has come under sustained pressure, not least from the work of Roger Scruton, whose seminal Aesthetics of Architecture has been widely influential in developing the debate. Scruton claims that because architecture is a public art, it is required to operate within a system of established manners, its publicity rendering it outside the orbit of the fine arts, where genius is sought and celebrated. Architecture is a matter of manners to which the public subscribes. Scruton thinks that, rather than grant architects the status of 'artist', they should be regarded as journeymen, able to direct the building of municipal works in accordance with pattern books passed down through the ages—just as the law is bequeathed from one generation to the next. The architecture of intoxication promises a sense of place in which the author can feel their forlorn neo-liberal selves accommodated.
