This week marks a national celebration of architecture. Here internationally-acclaimed Brighton-born architect Piers Gough writes about the city landmarks closest to his heart.

I was lucky enough spend the first five years of my life at the top of Brunswick Square, which not only has some of the most flamboyant houses ever built but is part of one of the greatest pieces of 19th Century urban planning - stretched squares and crescents pulling the seaside back up into the city.

Many years later I bought architect Wells Coates' seminal circular radio, which also reminds me of his brilliant contribution to the stuccoed seafront - Embassy Court.

This building floats between high modernism and art deco, perfectly capturing the gaiety of the era and seaside. It is also in immediate need of sensitive restoration to its former elegance.

These gleaming, man-made cliffs are anchored down the centre by the green space of the Steine with its fantastical pavilion and two of Brighton's fine collection of Victorian churches.

However, I also love Godhard Rendel's St Wilfreds Church, Elm Grove, which has now been converted into flats, and the same architect's Princes House in North Street. These are also fine early 20th Century buildings.

Later, our family moved from white to black - the knapped flint of Brighton College in Kemp Town. We didn't have a car so walked everywhere, mostly past junk shops. While Breedons Bookshop, the first Habitat and Casa Pupo shops - and The Who at the Aquarium - made Brighton feel very swinging in the Sixties.

Brighton Square was an excellently sensitive extension of the Lanes at that period but not perhaps Bartholomew Square, which never really came alive until the witty Moshi Moshi seemingly dropped in from outer space.

The whole front slides across the ultimate beam-me-sideways doors, to reveal a Japanese restaurant designed by Dutchman Alex de Rjke.

But somehow Bond Street and Kensington Gardens always seemed more simpatico than the more chi-chi Lanes and this is going to be the setting for Brighton's first 21st Century civic building - the new library, designed by Scotland's architect of the year, Rab Bennetts.

Eventually we moved to Lewes, perhaps just to get a better look at the new Sussex University that was starting to be built.

Basil Spence was the architect for many big buildings, including Coventry Cathedral and the Knightsbridge Barracks, but this was perhaps his most graceful essay.

The soft orange/red brick and shallow vaulted concrete arches were, incidentally, directly descended from the great Le Corbusier's late work.

The building leaves lovely great openings in the four sides of the courtyard to capture views of the downland, making the whole thing appear to float in the valley, reflected in its own moat. Although one of the first, it turned out to be one of the best of the new universities.

My firm has recently been commissioned to design some buildings in the city and we are looking forward to trying to enhance the spirit and exuberance of its heritage in a 21st Century style.