A wall, yes, even a boundary wall is worth an extra look under the enthusiastic eye of Eileen McNamara. Buildings start to take on a life, a history and an appeal of their own when you're talking to this young architect.

After her first year at UCD, she worked in her uncle's office in Dublin, Rene McNally & Associates, for the summer. "We designed a wall," says a delighted McNamara. "It was quite a neat wall. The structural design was interesting and the detail that my uncle went into to make it was quite exciting for me. It was 80 meters long and quite high."

As a young professional setting out on her career, she jumped at the chance some months ago to work on the £3 million redevelopment of Dublin's City Hall. "It's so domineering from the outside," she says. "It's open to the public. It's like a small Pantheon in Dublin. The oculus is there, with 12 openings around the dome. It was the Royal Exchange. Around the perimeter was an arcade, a covered market for the merchants of the city. Now is the time to redevelop it."

Sure enough, if you crane your neck, you will see the beautiful domed roof and the 12 windows surrounding the oculus. It's an impressive sight dating back to the late 18th century.

You will know a budding architect, McNamara believes, through his or her interest in buildings. It's a passion and a love. It's something that never leaves you. "I was always quite interested in buildings. My grandfather was an engineer and my uncle is an engineer. My father and mother are also involved in property . . . when we were young out driving we'd stop and look at houses. It was part of when I was growing up, we were always commenting and looking at buildings."

While still at school her uncle "steered me into looking into architecture. I was interested in design and I felt it was well worth trying it for the first year and I loved it." And so she went to UCD.

In first year there were 52 in the class, about equal numbers of men and women. "We lost 11 in the first year," says McNamara. "That's quite a high drop-out rate" but, she says, architecture is something you either love or hate. She spent her first summer after school working with Michael Healy & Associates in her home city of Limerick. "They gave me a really nice mix and brought me to site meetings to see the buildings."

Recalling college, she says: "There's a lot of theory in college. When you get out to an office you really see what it's like. You're dealing with builders and clients and that's an important part of it. You see what it's like meeting deadlines and trying to compromise and that's an important part. You're also trying to deal with subcontractors and get everyone to gel together."

After third year, she went to Berlin for a year - "there was a lot of work there." Most of her classmates would have gone abroad also, she adds. Architecture students are advised to take a year off and gain experience at this stage of the course - "we went over on spec, but I managed to get design experience over there," she adds smiling at her good fortune.

Getting work in Berlin was a matter of "getting out the telephone book and going out cold and just knocking on doors. It was a case of getting your portfolio and knocking on the door." And it paid off.

"I got to design a Budhist Centre for Montpellier in France. I was working with the architect who ran the office in Berlin. He was very busy so I got to do the design. I'd have weekly meetings with him, a crit, and get the next direction . . . it was exceptional to get that kind of design work. To do design is just amazing." McNamara is still delighted at her good luck.

When she returned at Easter that year, she got a chance to work on a terrace of houses in Limerick just off Pery Square on Barrington Street, behind St Michael's Church.

Again McNamara begins to describe in great detail the interesting aspects of the houses that she got to design. "It was quite a long, thin space. It's a fine Georgian square and you had to make them fit in. It's predominantly red-brick. It was interesting. The terrace was built when I was in fourth year."

In her final year, McNamara's class choose Cork as the focus of their studies. The whole class spent the first part of their final year investigating the roots of the city. "Cork was essentially like Venice, built over a series of islands," she explains. "We all zoned in on the river and looked at how the walls were formed."

McNamara graduated last year. "There's a lot of work out there," she says. She worked for Sam Stephenson last year for about two months. She then worked for Delahunty & Harley for six months. Then she got a call from Jim Barrett, the Dublin city architect, and "jumped at the chance." The project runs until September 1999.

Her advice to students thinking of architecture is not to worry about not having a subject like technical drawing. "I had never done it. I wouldn't worry about that." In general, she says, architecture is something "where you'll know whether you like it or hate it very quickly."