Unsung local architects are to be pitted against the globetrotting mega-stars of the profession in an attempt to seek out the best new building in the world.

Zoos, police stations and dentists’ surgeries will have as much chance of winning the inaugural World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards as cutting-edge football stadiums and airports, the organisers promised yesterday.

The most prestigious existing architectural awards, such as the Pritzker and the Stirling Prize, are decided behind closed doors and tend to reward an inner circle of brand-name architects. In contrast, this competition will be settled in public and the top prize could go to a complete unknown.

Premier league architects such as Lord Foster of Thames Bank, Richard Rogers, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid juggle commissions worth billions of pounds all over the world. They are credited with the power to transform the image of whole regions through projects such as Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or Richard Rogers’ Madrid-Barajas airport.

However, Paul Finch, the editor of The Architectural Review and programme director of the WAF Awards, said that the most significant building in the world in any given year was not necessarily one of the most high-profile.

“It could be that a primary school in Glasgow or a small church in Peru is actually the building doing most to alter the way we think about the building type,” he said.

He nominated ten great British buildings from the past 100 years that he believes would have been in contention for the prize had it existed then. They included a bus garage, a public lavatory and an oratory in a convent of Augustinian Sisters.

“Broad Leys overlooking Lake Windermere, Finsbury Health Centre, the Elephant Room in Forge Cottage, Brynmawr Rubber Factory, Stockwell Bus Garage, the Rare Books Library at Newnham College, Cambridge, Walter Segal’s self-build houses in Highgate, the TVAM studios, The Oratory at Boarbank Hall and Piers Gough’s lavatories and flower shop in Westbourne Grove – these are all in some way exceptional buildings which deserve a wider audience,” he said.

“A really first-class small building should beat a very decent big one [to the top prize]. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, for example, was probably the most influential building in the world in the year it was completed, even though it was only a house. It redefined domestic architecture. The best architecture makes you scrap your previous assumptions about a building type.”

The WAF prize is backed by 26 architectural magazines from five continents. Any new, restored or converted building completed between January 1, 2007, and the closing date for entries of June 20 is eligible.

The competition covers 96 types of building split into 16 main categories. There are awards for churches, mosques and synagogues, for theme parks, hotels and visitor centres, and for police stations, prisons and community centres.

The festival takes place from October 22 to 24 in Barcelona, a city dotted with iconic landmarks, from Antoni GaudÍ’s extraordinary unfinished church, the Sagrada Familia, to Gehry’s shimmering giant Fish on the seafront.

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