Foster's architect firm to make 400 redundant

Lord Foster's architecture firm is to make up to 400 staff redundant - almost a quarter of its workforce.

Foster + Partners announced the job cuts in a letter to employees, prompting widespread anger and dismay among its highly-regarded architects.

The firm, behind such London landmarks as the Gherkin tower, City Hall, the Millennium Bridge and the new Wembley Stadium, has been hit by the dramatic reduction in construction projects across the world.

Chairman Lord Foster, who founded the practice in 1967, transforming it into the world's third largest architecture firm, had declared in the autumn he "didn't foresee" job cuts and only this week the firm, with a £142million turnover, was boasting of having one of the fastest growing profits of any business in the UK.

The cuts will be spread across Foster + Partners' 17 offices worldwide, with those in Berlin and Istanbul closing altogether by March. The firm intends to reduce its staff to under 1,000.

The closure of the Berlin office -which worked mainly on eastern European and Russian projects and is reported to employ 76 staff - is a particular blow to the firm.

Lord Foster made a name for himself in Germany by rebuilding and transforming the Reichstag post reunification and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A number of high-profile projects have been put on ice or else scaled back because of the economic downturn.

A 118-storey tower in Moscow, which would have been Europe's largest skyscraper, was cancelled late last year, while a skyscraper at the site of the World Trade Center in New York has been delayed.