What about Stonehenge?

Well Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower shouldn't be on the list for a start. And don't get me going on the Wales Millennium Centre (oh, go on, do!). Are you having a laugh, Dorling Kindersley?

Let the bickering begin! We all love a list, and there's nothing that riles an anorak in any subject more than a “best of” list. But this list, I tell you, is an absolute joke. And this architectural anorak is well and truly riled.

Do these bozos not have eyes in their heads? The Spinnaker Tower? More “must-see” than, say, Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, Blenheim Palace? For the blessedly ignorant, Portsmouth's tower, which opened in 2005, is what I call a Pointless Icon. It has a point, of course - a very tall point, 170m high. But it lacks a purpose.

The best buildings in Britain?

(. . . and one in Ireland). DK Guides publishes its top 20, our writers disagree - join the debate

• Top 20 buildings around the world

Multimedia

Top 20 buildings around the world

Dorling Kindersley's choice omits some notable landmarks, not least the Alhambra and Petra

World’s new seven wonders chosen

History has been rewritten after about 100m people voted to name the seven new wonders of the world

History is packed with iconic buildings - the Pyramids, The Colossus of Rhodes, Brunelleschi's dome for Florence Cathedral - but their power is greatened by direction towards a higher purpose: the souls of departed pharaohs, the glory of God, etc.

These days, though, our gods are Ryanair and EasyJet, and the functional purpose of a “must-see” iconic building has become not only secondary to its looks, but incidental. Its looks are its purpose. Who remembers the art inside Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim? Spinnaker pushes this even farther. Spinnaker is pure icon, designed for no other purpose than to be “must seen” and box-ticked by tourists; a bimbo building thrown up to dupe us all into gawping slack-jawed, “ooh, ahh, isn't it tall?”. Its higher purpose is thrill for thrill's sake. It is empty, junk-food architecture.

And it's not even good junk. There is nothing inherently wrong with Pointless Icons. The Eiffel Tower and the London Eye are exactly that - a bit of fun - but dazzle with engineering prowess, elegance, even if they lack the depth and allusiveness of truly great architecture.

The Spinnaker, though, doesn't dazzle. From a distance (I'd try five miles) it almost works, though its shape is more Dubai than maritime Portsmouth. Up close, though, and it all gets a bit low-res, its crudely detailed engineering just bluster, not structure.

And the Wales Millennium Centre? Another invention of our times, this time the Crap Icon: we want profound architecture but stingethimble Britain won't cough up the money to make it. The result: high ambition, feeble realisation. It has a point, this time - music - and does it pretty well. But to this they piled on nationalism - the vast building required to act as national icon - but forgot to pile on the pounds. At this size, even £106million does not a gargantuan national icon make. The result: all bulk, no money left for its wafer-thin architecture, plastered on like cheesy Welsh flock wallpaper.

Their inclusion makes me fear that this list is more about the worst kind of tourist box-ticking than actual architecture. Actual architecture at its most thrilling and powerful is by definition a three-dimensional experience tweaking all the senses. It is not, despite the demands for it in this age of celebrity architecture, just about visual allure. Explore these two stinkers any farther than the two-dimensional image and you are in for a disappointment.

The list saves itself with real architecture: St Pancras - a masterwork of Victorian fancy and engineering; Edinburgh Castle - go on then, though there are better castles; The Gherkin - Britain's only world-class skyscraper; The Houses of Parliament, St Paul's, Tate Modern, the Eden Project - how could you refuse?; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill - Britain finally embraces minimalist modernism at the seaside; Ely Cathedral - the sight of it rising from the Fens!; Bath - a masterwork in urban planning; Burghley House, Stamford - nice bit of Elizabethan pomp; the Radcliffe Camera covers Oxbridge, I guess.

But then loses it with a succession of baffling choices that owe more to the particular prejudices of the editors than considered inclusion. Portmeirion? There are better British eccentrics out there. The Scottish Parliament - worth seeing but must-see?; The Barbican Centre? There's better postwar Modernism. Duart Castle, Mull? Great landscape, so-so castle. St Bartholomew's Church, Brighton? Come on. More must-see than the Pavilion? Bantry House, Ireland? Just to make Ireland feel better? “Nothing says more about a place than its buildings,” says Dorling Kindersley. With this list, I truly hope not.

Times recommends

• Overlanding then and now
• Live Q&A: ski fitness and injury
• Get the right payment card and deny Ryanair its hefty fee