What's your favourite building?

While audiences vote to save an old building for the BBC's Restoration, architects are mulling over the best new structures of the year. So what makes a good building? We want you to tell us, and send your pictures.

For Gail Porter it's Gaudi's ornately decorative buildings of Barcelona; for Ann Widdecombe it's St Peter's at the Vatican.

Sir Clement Freud would plump for London's St Pancras Station, Quincy Jones for the Kremlin and Dom Joly would choose his local kebab house.

Favourite buildings come in all shapes and sizes.

Click here to send us a picture of your favourite building, whether it's a global landmark or a little-known property

Britain's historic building stock is enjoying a revival of interest thanks to the BBC's Restoration show, for which viewers are now being asked to select a favourite crumbling pile from a shortlist of 10.

This year's Stirling Prize shortlist

In pictures

At entirely the other end of the spectrum, six of Britain's best new buildings have made it to the shortlist for the prestigious Stirling Prize for architecture.

Yet, together they make up just a tiny handful of the British buildings that are admired and treasured by ordinary people.

So what makes a popular building?

"A building that performs well," says George Ferguson, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

"Staff can perform much better in a well designed building and happiness at home is, in part, down to the same thing."

He offers the example of a primary school. "Essentially, you're talking about a small building with six classrooms off a corridor. A good architect will turn that corridor from a passageway into the heart of the building.

Gail goes for Gaudi - what building would you choose?

"So the corridor becomes the 'street' - a place to congregate and play, and it can be an adaptable learning place."

And it's not just the landmark buildings - the Taj Mahals and Eiffel Towers of this world - that are great, he says.

"A lot of the delight we get is from the spaces these buildings provide. The squares and courtyards where people come together. Good architecture should have a good indoor outdoor relationship."

Hospitals and medical centres can particularly benefit from good design, says Mr Ferguson, since it can help as part of the "curing process". He offers the example of Maggie's Edinburgh [see Internet Links, right] - one of a small network of centres which offer support for cancer sufferers and their families.

Simple palace

Recent extensions to the centre have retained the domestic, non-institutional feeling, leaving it open, airy and informal.

The BBC's Restoration has highlighted historic buildings

If he had to pick one building above all others as his favourite, it would be a little-known palace in Kyoto, Japan.

Although it was built 400 years ago, the Katsura Palace appears to be a "thoroughly modern building".

"It is beautiful and simple, decked in the mats and paper screens you associate with Japan, and which allow a marvellous light to stream through.

"It's not dressed up with the style and ornaments we think about in European palaces from those days. Anyone who saw it would think it's a modern building."

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Whether it's a global landmark or a little-known property, send us a picture of your favourite building, and tell us why it's special.

You can e-mail it to us at [e-mail] or send it by phone. Use the subject title: favourite building.

Don't forget to include your name, the country where you live and why it is your favourite building. We will run a selection on Monday.

If you want to send your picture from your mobile phone, dial 07970 885089. You can send them from any network or phone. Please send the large full size images (usually 640x480 pixels) taken by the mobiles otherwise they are too small to publish.

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In contributing to BBC News Online you agree to grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media. (See the Terms and Conditions for the full terms of our rights.)

It's important to note, however, that you still own the copyright to everything you contribute to BBC News Online. This means you are perfectly free to take what you have produced and re-publish it somewhere else. Please note that if your image is accepted, we will publish your name alongside it on the BBC News website. The BBC cannot guarantee that all pictures will be published and we reserve the right to edit your comments.