Last week, The Courier asked readers to vote for their favourite city building. That prompted many readers to make their own suggestions, and critique ours, on our website.

To balance the ledger, today we offer a list of nominees for the tag of Ballarat’s least attractive structure.

But when it comes to architecture, what distinguishes the ugly from the beautiful?

Watch a slideshow of some of Ballarat's least attractive buildings

According to Ballarat architect Wendy Jacobs, many of the least attractive buildings have been determined by their budget.

‘‘I think the best thing I ever heard was from an architect I worked with, whose most scathing thing he could say about anything was that it was accountant’s architecture,’’ Ms Jacobs said.

On the other hand, many of the most beautiful buildings in Ballarat and elsewhere blew their budgets.

‘‘Her Majesty’s Theatre never made money for the developers. Everyone loved it, but they didn’t make a quid.’’

Ms Jacobs said many of our city’s architectural treasures were also built at a time when civic pride was a bigger factor than today.

But Morton Dunn architect Alan Morton said budget was sometimes used as an excuse for bad design.

‘‘When someone says ‘I’ve only got a limited budget but I want to do it well’, there are ways of doing it,’’ Mr Morton said.

He said a crucial factor was context and how a building fitted in with its surrounds.

‘‘There are some (in Ballarat) very clearly where people haven’t thought about it. They’ve taken the building out of context,’’ he said.