IN the first of our weekly debates, we ask is Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral one of the world’s worst buildings, as a CNN article claimed this week?

YES, says Wayne Colquhoun from Liverpool Preservation Trust

I love modern architecture, but it’s hard to like this brutalist concrete upturned funnel - though I can’t agree it’s in the world’s worst 10 buildings.

Looking remarkably like The Cathedral of Brasilia, a hyperboloid structure designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1958, it soon started leaking like a giant colander.

The architect Frederick Gibberd was sued, and structural problems were not resolved until the 1990s. Eventually, the mosaic tiles had to be replaced with glass-reinforced plastic.

Jerry-built was the term often used to describe its construction. Could it still be a structural time bomb?

The outdated, architecturally futurist fantasy is emblematic of 60s architecture that at times went horribly wrong.

It was a period when tried and tested methods of construction bent the given laws of logic to sometimes severe and often detrimental effect.

European funding was recently spent on its so-called realignment with Hope Street, while next door the Wellington Rooms - one of our historic gems - is derelict and sadly ignored.

Always meant to compete with the majesty of Giles Gilbert Scott’s Anglican Cathedral, it resorts to shock and architectural impertinence - like a noisy little mongrel, barking at a graceful, distinguished pedigree.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who submitted a design for the Anglican Cathedral competition, once said: “There is hope in honest error, but none in the icy cold perfection of the mere stylist.”

The design by Sir Frederick Gibberd’s was one of several that could have been chosen for Liverpool.

It was a replacement to a much grander design, by Sir Edwin Lutyens, which was meant to be a rival to St Peter’s in Rome. Lutyens only managed the building of the Crypt before the outbreak of war, and then in the 60s the cut-price colander idea came along.

No doubt it was sold to the public as being iconic.

Liverpudlians are often defensive of their own, but CNN have sparked off a debate that, if entered into, will give us more understanding of our public realm.

It’s not a good idea to risk your future by disrespecting your architectural inheritance.

Now loved by many who are proud to have two Cathedrals in the City, people now seem to have got used to it. Does that mean it’s good architecture?

Lutyens’s original design model is in the new Museum of Liverpool. Now that is a building that should be in the world’s worst top 10.

No, says Dominic Wilkinson, President of Liverpool Architecture Society

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is beautiful.

The internal space filled with light and colour is a very powerful experience - a single and apparently simple space which represents an idea.

The circular plan form of the Metropolitan Cathedral is the built embodiment of a change in the Catholic liturgy (the bringing together of the priests and the congregation around a central altar), and as such it is a rather rare and special example of a particular point in time for church architecture.

The external appearance is often criticized, but here it meets its requirement to be a civic monument with great skill.

A relatively small cathedral, certainly when compared to the Anglican, the strong imagery of its concrete buttresses and crown of thorns brings a presence in the city beyond its actual size. The long-awaited great flight of steps, and the angular bell tower close the view down Hope Street very effectively and, most importantly of all, the conical form stands out as a true landmark on Liverpool’s skyline.

In a very secular society the function of cathedrals is complex, unlike the great medieval cathedrals which were built in a world where the civic and religious functions were seen as one.

We now have buildings which have to meet the requirements of the faithful and act as public monuments for different audiences.

One of the achievements of Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral is to fulfil both criteria with power and conviction.

But could the city have had an even more spectacular cathedral? It is true that the model of the Lutyens scheme in the Liverpool museum shows an amazing building of vast size, but that would surely have been its weakness.

The cost of such a building would have been crippling, and by the late 1940s cheaper versions were already being explored.

In reality, his scheme would have been subject to cost cutting and reductions in quality that would have given us a compromise. It is easier to long for what you don’t have than to appreciate what you do.

Inclusion of the Catholic Cathedral on CNN’s list is a testament to its success; not failure.

Ideas of beauty are personal and subject to the vagaries of fashion and taste; recognition, on the other hand, will stand the test of time.

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is a true landmark an iconic structure.