Drawing rooms

It all started with some doodling in a copybook. Sinead Hughes didn't realise when she was a little girl in primary school all those years ago that this was a sign of where her career path lay. Years later when she was looking through her sixth class copybooks, she discovered "I had all these little plans of apartments. I took them to my interview (in DIT)," she says. "It struck a chord obviously and I had been thinking about it for years without realising it."

At second-level in Dun Lughaidh Secondary School in Dundalk, Co Louth, she was good at art. "My favourite subjects were art and maths, in fact," she recalls. "I didn't think I was going to be an artist. It wasn't for me but I really liked maths and the more I pursued the idea of architecture the more I thought `yes this is for me'. I don't know where I came upon it."

She completed her Leaving Certificate and applied to DIT Bolton Street, Dublin, for architecture. "It's an extremely difficult course," she cautions. "Very, very few people go straight through." In her own class, only three of the original 50-plus in her first year class carried on and graduated five years later. "There are so many aspects to it. You have to have an aptitude for so many different elements: design, having a knowledge of the technical aspects, art appreciation, and then some science. The course is incredibly diverse and quite complex."

The "crit system where you regularly present your design to be criticised - that's a huge ordeal for an 18 or 19 year old". Architecture students, she explains, are expected "to stand and defend" their designs "in front of professionals, five or six tutors", who discuss your projects. "The whole education of architecture is about learning what's gone before and about learning from and discussing your ideas. You're not acting as a sole agent. "You are continually learning, you can never know enough," says ead Hughes, who is an architect with Murray O Laoire Architects.

Likewise in work, she explains, architects bounce their ideas off each other. "Regularly we have in-house crits where you present ideas to others; if you're stuck, discussing it can help you come up with a solution."

Hughes took a couple of years off in the middle of her course at DIT to gain experience and reassess her own motivation. "I took the scenic route," she jokes. "I took a couple of years off to decide if I really wanted to do it. I came to a point where I wasn't sure if I wanted to finish. I needed to reassess. You're encouraged to take time out to get experience in offices and to travel." She went to Copenhagen and to Berlin. She also worked with architects in Dublin during this time-out period. "It's invaluable. You'd be aware of all the different aspects. It's a fantastic experience. College is quite separate to the real world because you can go to town in your designs (in college)."

Summing up her time as an undergraduate in a number of architects' offices in Dublin and in Berlin, she says "it was a brilliant experience. I certainly felt a lot more confident and more self-assured. I gained practical experience. Maybe confidence was a lot to do with it and I was that bit older. But it was tough at the time," she recalls. On her return to Bolton Street she was offered an Erasmus scholarship with the chance of spending her fourth year studying at the Ecole d'Architecture la Villette in Paris.

On completion of this year, Hughes returned to Dublin for her final year to do her thesis. She chose a site in Temple Bar because "I wanted an urban aspect to my project". Since graduating three years ago, she has worked in the Murray O Laoire offices in Fumbally Lane. She's also just passed her RIAI exams.

At the moment she's working on the extension to the county council offices in Sligo which is "due for completion in the next couple of months. That's really exciting. I go up every two weeks for site meetings. I love it," she says.