Richard Rogers had to let go a quarter of his staff last week, Frank Gehry laid off dozens, and Norman Foster gave walking papers to over 300 employees. Now Zaha Hadid is the latest starchitect to be hit by the economy, as her firm has announced that they will be reducing their employee numbers in an effort to "rebalance the composition of its staff" which, if we may say so, is a little too heavy on the business speak and therefore a touch insensitive. But regardless of language, here we have yet another major architect who is having likely having fewer projects to pitch on and those they've won are being put on hold, despite what they say to the contrary:

Responding to rumours of wider redundancies at the practice, a spokesman said that the firm had never had more projects on site around the world, and had other projects due to begin in the near future, but would be reducing staff numbers by a "small amount."

A spokesman from the practice said: "The office has always evaluated its resources in line with our clients' requirements and based on current forecasts of work and assessment of skills within the practice, we believe that we are in a good position with some skills adjustment required."