When Kenny Schachter, an art dealer, decided to build an extravagant new live/work property in Hoxton Square, in east London, he knew who he wanted to design it: Zaha Hadid, probably the world’s most prominent female architect.

“I was amazed by her work,” he says. “She’s a creative genius. She was absolutely the right person to get.”

Baghdad-born Hadid, whose most recent projects include the Aquatic Centre for the 2012 London Olympics, also in east London, came up with a suitably extraordinary design for Schachter’s house/gallery: something like a cubist painting turned into a 3-D building. However, although planners at Hackney council, the local authority, gave their permission, English Heritage, according to Schachter, “acted like Prince Charles, saying it was the wrong building in the wrong neighbourhood”. Their objections were eventually overcome, but then the credit crunch hit, and the £7m house/gallery project was suspended.

Such, it seems, are the perils of employing a “starchitect”, a term that took hold in the boom years of the late 1990s to describe architects such as Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Daniel Libeskind, Richard Rogers, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron — and Hadid — who sprang from the pages of architectural magazines to become household names.

The boom is history, however, and the architecture industry is in a bad way: practices across the country are going under, and, according to the Architects’ Journal, at least half of the firms have laid off staff. So, does this mean architects such as Rogers, Foster or Hadid are now so desperate, they are ready to design your kitchen extension or your loft conversion? Not necessarily.

“As a practice, we don’t tend to do bespoke houses,” says Rogers’s firm, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. I don’t have any more joy with Foster + Partners. “We would prefer not to comment,” says Gayle Markovitz, a marketing executive there. An e-mail to Hadid’s people is courteously handled, but inconclusive.

Even though members of the architectural A list may still be out of reach for those without multi-million-pound budgets, the downturn makes this a good time to spot up-and-coming “starchitects” — and make use of their services. “Obviously, you’re going to pay far more for, say, Norman Foster than a local person, should you be able to get them,” says Adrian Dobson, director of practice for the Royal Institute of British Architects. “But remember, many well-known architects started out with domestic projects. So look for people in their early to midstage careers.”

Ed Reeve, a photographer, went one step better when he set out to build a home in Hackney: he turned to the Tanzanian-born David Adjaye, one of Britain’s trendiest architects, whose clients have included Ewan McGregor, among other artists and actors. The result: the Sunken House, a minimalist, three-storey wooden cube placed incongruously among the period properties in the conservation area of De Beauvoir Town. Nicknamed Ed’s Shed, the house appears blank from the street, but is filled with light from the back and top.

Just as a celebrity chef is unlikely to do all the cooking himself, so a “starchitect” will devolve much of the work to a junior member of his team — while still retaining overall control.

“Once David was satisfied the ball was rolling, he handed the project to someone in his office,” says Reeve. “But he would look in on meetings or when an important design decision had to be made.”

Reeve feels as if he’s living in a piece of public property. “It’s famous,” he says. “Passers-by take photographs of it.” His experience, he insists, has been fantastic — in contrast to that of Janet Street-Porter, one of Adjaye’s former clients, who referred to the architect in 2005 as “someone I dream of regularly ritually disembowelling or forcing to go through a nasty form of torture before mopping up the storm water in my living room with his designer sweaters”. Adjaye has since blamed Street-Porter’s unhappiness on a misunderstanding.

More recently, however, his practice has faced problems of a more serious kind: despite winning a series of prestigious contracts across the world, it was obliged earlier this year to enter into a company voluntary arrangement, a means of rescheduling debts to stave off insolvency proceedings.

For anybody wanting starchitect style without the hassle, there’s another way — buy it off the shelf. “Developers know that a named architect adds value,” says Roger Zogolovitch, the hairman of the London-based architects Solid Space. Candy & Candy, the upmarket developer, employed Foster’s practice to design 21 Chesham Place in Belgravia, which opened last year, and Richard Rogers’s firm for One Hyde Park and the vexed Chelsea Barracks scheme, which has been forced back to the drawing board by the planners following the Prince of Wales’s well-publicised objections.

Schachter, who reckons he spent some 6%-10% of his £7m budget on Hadid’s fee, meanwhile hopes his unusual home will be “up before the Olympics”, giving him the only residential project she has designed in Britain.

Not that it has been a smooth ride. “Zaha’s well known for dressing people down, and I’ve been dressed down,” he says. “Still, I’ve moved from fear to love.”

Get planning

How can I spot a “starchitect” in the making? Check awards (architects love putting their designs into competitions) and get referrals: the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba; 020 7307 3700, architecture.com) offers a client service. Names to look out for include Alison Brooks Architects, Laurie Chetwood, Niall McLaughlin and Michaelis Boyd, which worked on David Cameron’s Notting Hill home. Also up and coming are Patrick Lynch of Lynch Architects and Kevin Carmody of Carmody Groarke.

Will my architect respond to my demands or be a dictator? Bear in mind that, as the client, you simply want a house, albeit a very nice design-conscious one, whereas the architect may have an agenda of their own. “Some architects are visionary and creative designers, who may be more demanding. Others are geared towards, say, sustainable design,” says Jane Duncan, a Buckinghamshire-based architect. “If you’re spending £250,000, it makes sense to get someone right for your job.” A highly singular architect such as Zaha Hadid will require creative freedom.

How do I find out more? Find three or so architects you admire and invite them to the site. This consultation is often free and is a good way to get ideas.

How do I know they’ll do what I want? Create a “mood board” or scrapbook of buildings and interiors that you like and which they can constantly refer to. Also remember to ask about functional aspects such as energy efficiency, light, storage, acoustics and heating performance.

How much will it cost? Anything between 5%-11% of the full project price. Published per-hour rates are £84 to £100 per hour for a senior architect.

How can I avoid nasty surprises? Make sure the budget and architect’s duties are set out clearly from the start. Stick to the brief, and don’t change your mind.

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