TOM DYCKHOFF

The writer is The Times's architecture critic

King's College Chapel, Cambridge (Matthew Parris)

St Pancras? Spare us. Walt Disney meets Count Dracula. The Gherkin? An elegant joke. The Scottish Parliament? Aargh. Even Catalans don't like it. The Tower of Big Ben and (tail wagging dog) its appended legislature? A vulgar, fake, overheated piece of instant antiquity which pulls off the remarkable feat of making you feel cramped and cluttered amid acres of space and beneath a 50ft-high ceiling - I know, I've worked there.

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

• Gallery: the top 20 buildings in the British Isles

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

Too much gee-whiz. Too many of these choices either brutal or braggadocio: mailed fist or overwrought extravaganza. Architecture should neither bully nor gush. I like calm in a building: serenity, grace, space and light. Elemental qualities: architecture that nobody needs to explain.

Which is why I cannot understand the omission of King's College Chapel in Cambridge. For all its ornamentation, there is something essentially cool and straightforward in its conception.

From the moment I first saw it and stepped inside, as an unsophisticated young undergraduate from the colonies, I have loved this building in the way that a great building should be loved: not in awed submission but in friendship. I know nobody, of any culture, race, religion or generation, who has disliked or been unable to “understand” King's College Chapel. You are immediately at one with the mind of its creators.

This late-medieval building's unity of design is remarkable in a project that took so long in the construction: a concept so strong as to have been transmitted undefiled through generations of masons and craftsmen.

From its wide, uncluttered floors to what is to me the most wonderful ceiling in the world - elegant, delicate yet strong: a soaring, vaulted fanning-out of pale carved stone - what distinguishes this building from so much that is presented to us as great architecture is that no learning, no handbook, no discussion of its claim to greatness is required. It hits you straight between the eyes.

Every visitor who walks through its doors at once sees and admires what its creators aimed to achieve. A single idea, a single intelligence, shines through: a sort of purity.

It is hardly surprising that this chapel has become associated with music. If it had a voice, it would be a boy's treble. Plain in the most beautiful sense. Unfruity. Lofty yet unintimidating. Simple in its intricacy. Modest in its richness. Weightless. Luminous. Graceful.

Broadcasting House, London (Libby Purves)

Times recommends

• Same flight + different airline code = £225 out of pocket
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events
• Book 2010's best holidays now