The architect Richard Rogers has launched a tirade against the Prince of Wales after his glass and steel designs to redevelop the former Chelsea Barracks site were dropped.

Lord Rogers of Riverside accused the Prince of singlehandedly scuppering his modernist project by using his contacts with the Qatari royal family.

The architect said that the Prince had written to the chairman of Qatari Diar, the property investment arm of the Qatar state, urging him to look at classical design alternatives for the prestigious site in central London.

“I think that anyone who uses his power due to birth [like this] breaks a constitutional understanding," Lord Rogers told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

“It’s not a law, it’s a constitutional understanding and a trust we have within our society about the role of people who have received power in that manner.”

He called for a panel of constitutional experts to re-examine the Prince’s powers.

Chelsea Barracks were sold for £959 million last year to Project Blue (Guernsey) Limited (PBGL), part of Qatari Diar, in the UK’s most expensive home property deal.

The original plans included 638 flats in a grid of pavilions up to 10 storeys high, close to the site’s original 1691 building designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

After public consultation the planning application was revised in February, reducing the number of properties to 552 and increasing the public space from two acres to 6.2.

Then last Friday the Middle Eastern owners of the 12.8-acre site opposite Chelsea's historic Royal Hospital announced that they had withdrawn their planning application altogether – less than a week before it was due to be considered by the planning committee.

The move followed a direct intervention by Prince Charles, who asked the Qatari ruler to consider an alternative design commissioned from Quinlan Terry, a classicist whose work is favoured by the Prince

Lord Rogers told Today: “I think there’s a dangerous precedent that the Prince has entered into, which is very much about how he sees style.

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