Architect Richard Meier’s latest design has the sleek curves and angular forms found in much of his signature work. But he’s not working in glass and steel—and the project isn’t a luxury condominium or a sprawling museum. Instead, the design is for two cashmere sweaters the Pritzker Architecture Prize winner created for a high-end New York fashion label: a buttonless cardigan for men and a belted one for women.

“It’s always good to try new things,” says Meier, 74, the architect of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

With the real estate boom all but over and skittish property developers breaking ground on fewer glitzy projects, architects from London to Los Angeles are finding creative ways to stay in the spotlight and extend their brands. The creative outlets of today’s star designers are departures from the side projects undertaken by notable architects of the past like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, who generally designed furnishings and home interiors when not creating buildings.    

Norman Foster, the leading British architect who designed the Hearst Tower in New York, has added yachts to his résumé, recently creating a string of vessels for luxury boating company YachtPlus. Frank Gehry, mastermind of the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is employing materials such as black gold and oxidized silver to expand his already popular line of jewelry for Tiffany. And Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win a Pritzker Prize, has put her name on stainless-steel vases for Italian kitchenware company Alessi. Although details of the deals are difficult to come by, they aren’t simply name-licensing arrangements. Manufacturers insist the designs are solely the work of the architects.

With the notion of architects as celebrities taking hold in popular culture in the past 10 years, it’s not surprising that manufacturers of luxury goods are rushing to sign up noted designers, say retail professionals. The companies are simply following property developers, who hired so-called starchitects in droves during the height of the real estate boom. Indeed, in recent years, architects like Meier, Robert A.M. Stern, and Daniel Libeskind—who generally design museums and government buildings—increasingly took on luxury condominium projects, with their names and images figuring prominently in developers’ marketing campaigns.

But with many real estate markets in the U.S. and Europe flooded with fancy new buildings, and hiring a star architect no longer a big deal, some architects are breaking out of their sphere of expertise.

“They’re really redefining how the general public sees an architect,” says Joseph Rosa, chief curator at the Art Institute of Chicago’s department of architecture and design. “For years, many people thought of architects simply as people who design buildings or as urban planners, but that’s clearly no longer the case.” Next year, the institute will present “Blurring the Boundaries,” an exhibition that profiles architects who have dabbled outside building design.

Norman Foster’s name is linked with iconic landmarks from London’s City Hall to the Reichstag in Berlin. His company, Foster & Partners, has also designed wind turbines and airports. But one of its latest projects is a fleet of $40 million luxury superyachts for the British firm YachtPlus. The company, which will sell the yachts fractionally, approached Foster because it wanted “more than your typical vessel,” says YachtPlus founder and chief executive Han Verstraete. The company has already taken dozens of orders, he says.  

The sleek yachts sleep up to 18 people and come with floor-to-ceiling windows on the main and upper decks—something one would expect to see on land rather than water. A glass spiral staircase links all four decks. “It certainly won’t be you’re typical boat,” Verstraete says.

The distinctive curves and planes found in Frank Gehry’s designs for museums and concert halls can also be found in the six lines of jewelry he created for Tiffany. The collections feature bracelets, rings, necklaces, and earrings. Gehry, an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal winner, used materials such as pernambuco wood, black gold, and cacholong stone, along with oxidized silver, to make the jewelry, according to a Tiffany spokesperson, who declined to give sales figures. The lowest-priced items start at $125, making it Gehry’s most affordable commission ever.

The two sweaters that Meier created for fashion company Lutz & Patmos bear the clean, straight lines that have become his trademark. They include a white, buttonless cardigan for men and a white, thigh-length, belted sweater for women. “They’re very simple and very comfortable,” says the designer. The label’s sweaters typically retail for $395 to $895 and are found at up-market department stores like Barneys. (Sales figures for Meier’s cardigans are not yet available.)

Each season, Lutz & Patmos invites one guest designer to create a sweater, according to Tina Lutz. (Actresses Liv Tyler and Julianne Moore have recently designed items.) Proceeds from the sale of the sweaters go to a charity of the guest designer’s choice. Meier is donating his portion to Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crises. This is not Meier’s first foray outside architecture. He has created chairs, office furniture, and kitchen utensils in the past. But, he says, this is his first fashion venture.

Star architects have certainly not given up their day jobs. Gehry recently unveiled plans for a $750 million residential and commercial complex in Los Angeles. Foster is designing the Moscow City Tower, a 118-story skyscraper under way near the Kremlin that will be Europe’s tallest building when it’s completed in 2010. And Meier says he has a Manhattan condo project in the works, as well as a museum in Germany.

“Don’t expect big names in architecture to give up building,” says Rosa. “It’s much too lucrative a profession for that to happen.”