The architect Lord Foster, who shaped London’s 21st-century skyline with buildings such as the Gherkin and the new Wembley stadium, is quitting Britain to live in a chateau in Switzerland.

Having made his name and an estimated £250m fortune with bold designs of glass and steel, he is moving to Switzerland “for lifestyle reasons” and for the “incredible countryside”. There he will live in an 18th-century chateau built in classical style.

His departure is prompting questions about his tax status and his membership of the House of Lords.

Foster, 72, who also designed Stansted airport and the “wobbly” millennium bridge, amassed much of his wealth from public building projects funded by the British taxpayer. Accordingly, peers have demanded that he reveal whether he will pay taxes in Britain.

Lord Foster’s spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the peer is domiciled in Britain for tax purposes and said such matters were “private to Lord Foster and his family”.

However, she confirmed that the architect would move to the chateau once a programme of refurbishment is complete. The palatial 1720s building, complete with extensive grounds, pillared portico and sumptuous interiors, was bought by Foster last year from the German industrialist Charles Grohe.

The architect has had strong ties to Switzerland for many years. He has owned a flat he designed in the exclusive resort of St Moritz for several years and each year completes the Engadin cross-country ski marathon – boasting a best time of a little over two and a half hours.

Foster is married to Elena Ochoa, a former journalist and Cambridge University lecturer. She is better known in her native Spain as “La doctora del sexo” after she presented the 1990 television programme Hablemos de Sexo (Let’s Talk about Sex). Their daughter Paola and son Eduardo are at school close to Lake Geneva.

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper this month, Foster revealed he was already immersed in local life and was judging an architectural competition for a new regional assembly.

“I love Switzerland. I live there for the quality of life . . . my children go to school there,” he said. “The vineyards in that area are just so beautiful and the countryside is so incredible.”

He intends to oversee his global practice from the chateau and is not planning to retire.

The architectural journal Building Design has speculated that Foster could “make substantial capital gains tax savings” on a deal with the private equity firm 3i, which took a minority stake in his firm last year. The practice was then valued at £300m, with Foster owning 85%.

The possibility of tax savings is fuelling a simmering row at Westminster over whether peers should still be able to belong to the House of Lords if they do not pay all their taxes in the UK.

Foster, a crossbench peer since 1999, is the third peer who is declining to confirm or deny full details of his tax status. The others are the Tory fundraisers Lord Laidlaw and Lord Ashcroft.

Two private members’ bills seeking to ban tax exiles from serving as MPs or peers are working their way through parliament.

Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer whose bill would force members of the Lords who do not pay full UK taxes to give up their right to vote, called on Foster to state publicly whether he would be based in Switzerland for tax purposes.

“It’s not illegal for peers who have made millions from projects funded by taxpayers to move residences offshore,” said Oakeshott. “But my bill would stop them sitting in the House of Lords and voting on British laws and taxes unless they pay tax here on all their income and capital gains like 25m hardworking British families.”

Over the years, Foster’s practice has won big public sector contracts such as Stansted airport, the British Museum’s Great Court, and Canary Wharf’s Tube station in London’s docklands.

He founded Foster and Partners in 1967 and went on to design the Reichstag restoration in Berlin, the HSBC tower in Canary Wharf and the two-mile long international terminal at Beijing airport.

His new home, however, stands in sharp contrast to such modernist edifices. Fronted by formal gardens and classical statuary, Château de Vincy was once visited by the writer Voltaire.

There’s not a glass and steel tower in sight.

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