One year on, RMJM's prize architect has yet to deliver

A RENOWNED architect who joined Edinburgh practice RMJM to boost its London business a year ago has failed to create a single design project for the business, it has emerged.

Stirling Prize winner Will Alsop was last October tasked with heading up the firm's rapidly expanding London office - which was to bear the name "Will Alsop at RMJM". It was seen as a move on the part of the Scottish company into "signature architect" territory, following in the footsteps of Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid.

But now, RMJM has been forced to admit that Alsop, who was one of the firm's most high profile recruits - with the exception of the appointment of disgraced banker Sir Fred Goodwin - has not picked up any work for the firm in the past 12 months.

Mr Alsop courted controversy last year when he quit his own eponymous practice to reportedly spend more time pursuing his painting - but turned up on the books of RMJM just two months later.

The company yesterday inisted that Mr Alsop was working on a number of pitches for new business, but that none had yet got "over the line" to be commissioned - and bring in much-needed cash for the business, which, like many other architecture firms, has been hard hit by the recession.

"Since Will Alsop's appointment in 2009, we have invested heavily in the London office and Will's operation there and have been giving him every possible support to get the projects he's been working on over the line," a spokesman told Building Design magazine.

It is believed that neither of the two major projects being worked on in the London studio - the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and another design for a building in Riyadh - involve Mr Alsop.

Announcing the architect's appointment in October last year, the firm said Mr Alsop would build "a world-class global design studio that further enhances and develops RMJM's reputation in the UK and abroad".

The hiring came just weeks before it was announced that Sir Fred, who is reputed to be earning a six figure salary, would also be taken on - as a consultant.

However, there have been concerns about the increasing influence of the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive at the company, which has suffered swingeing job cuts in recent months. An interior design department in the Dubai office has closed in the past few weeks, with the loss of a further two jobs. The company yesterday said the department had been linked to a specific project that had come to an end.

Staff in the Middle East say they have written to Sir Fred, and to chief executive Peter Morrison and his father Sir Fraser Morrison - chief executive for the Americas - about the problems."They don't even have the courtesy to respond," said one company source.

It emerged at the weekend that 80 staff quit the Hong Kong office of RMJM in recent weeks. Barry Shapiro, director for Asia, is also understood to have stepped down, as well as several senior staff members in the United States and one in Brussels.