Mary Doran

"Almost everyone else had moved out to Belfield by the time I started in UCD but we were in Earlsfort Terrace, which was terrific. There was a great feeling of camaraderie among the architecture students. It was a small class and we spent hours together working in the studio, often till 10 o'clock at night. It was very collegial. 

"The (opens in a new window)UCD Arch Soc used to organise great parties in the studio, so all our work and socialising was within the architecture bubble.

"Recently, I was in the National Concert Hall and it brought back memories of the concerts that would take place occasionally in the Great Hall, the Aula Max. They'd open the doors during concerts and you could just pull up a chair outside in the corridor, quite close to the stage, without buying a ticket. I saw Seán Ó Riada and also Muddy Waters."

It was a time of significant change in the School of Architecture.

"There had been a big upheaval in the School and Ivor Smyth was appointed as director. He came over from the UK and he brought a team of well-known English and Scottish architects with him as studio instructors. I think they had a big influence on quite a number of the architects of my era who are now award-winning architects.

"There was only one female member of staff – Fenella Dixon – but we didn't question it at the time. We didn't really know about women architects."

Things were changing in society too, and Mary became involved in political activism and the feminist movement.

"My first experience of political activity was the occupation of Hume Street. I was in first year. One day we were in the studio when an older student rushed in and started shouting that we should all get down to Hume Street. There was a lot of destruction of Georgian Dublin at the time, and Georgian houses on the corner of Hume Street and St Stephen's Green were in danger of being demolished for development. Marian Finucane, Deirdre Kelly and others – mainly students – had occupied one of the buildings in protest. Many of us architecture students joined the occupation, getting an education about the vulnerability of Georgian Dublin along the way.

"In those days pubs wouldn't serve pints to women. Some pubs wouldn't serve a woman unaccompanied by a man, and you couldn't go to the bar, you'd have to go to the lounge. Nell McCafferty organised a group of women to go to Neary's to ask for pints. A guy from my class came as well and he ordered two pints – one for me and one for him. Nell ordered a couple of whiskies and then pints, and she refused to pay for the round when they wouldn't serve the women pints. So then they called the cops. Those were the kinds of actions that made it into the papers because they were good photo opportunities."

"When I qualified and I was looking for a job, there was an ad in the paper for the OPW looking for architects. There was one rate of pay for married men, a lesser rate of pay for single men, an even lesser rate of pay for single women, and no rate of pay for married women. I got involved in various protests and campaigns for equal pay, contraception, all those issues.

"I was involved in setting up the (opens in a new window)Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and later, the Cork Rape Crisis Centre. We were seeing what was happening in other parts of the world and we started to do a bit of research. We met gardai and doctors, usually male, and there was a complete lack of awareness. When rape cases came to court, the attitudes of the judges – of everybody, in fact – were appalling. Eventually we managed to set up a phone line, but people, especially in government, were not supportive."

Mary worked as an architect in Dublin and Cork before the economic crisis in the 1980s set her on a different path for a while.

"Everything crashed in '88 and there was huge unemployment. I took off to New York, thinking I'd be there for 18 months. I stayed for nearly 10 years. Working in the confines of an architect's office, with long hours and only 5 days off every year, didn't suit me, but being away gave me the freedom to try different things.

"I worked in catering and restaurants. I made a lot of friends and I had a great time – much more fun than working in an office! Food was becoming a big thing in New York at the time, in the late 90s. I spent a summer working in a restaurant kitchen in Martha's Vineyard and it was fabulous, just being in a different place and living a different life. It was like slipping into somebody else's life for a while.

"I also got involved in screening independent Irish films and distributing them to colleges that taught Irish studies. We rented out a cinema in the East Village once a week and we had a great following. This was before social media, so we were sending out postcards every week to remind people. We organised an Irish film festival in the East Village in the early 90s and we had great support from the Irish consulate in New York."

Mary left New York and became a UCD student again, before coming full circle with a move back to Cork.

"I came home from New York in '97 and decided I would do a HDip in Arts Administration in case I couldn't get a job as an architect. I was living in Smithfield and I used to cycle out to Belfield every day. I didn't realise that the Celtic Tiger was rampant and there was loads of work in buildings again. I came back to Cork, and the rest is history.

"Looking back, I was lucky. I got a scholarship to Sandymount High School when I was 11 and it was a great school. The thinking was very much that girls and boys could achieve equally, and we were encouraged to do honours maths and whatever subjects we were interested in. There were quite a few girls in the school who went into areas that wouldn't have been traditionally female.

"There was very little career guidance in those days. There was accountant, actuary, architect…we got these leaflets that were in alphabetical order, and there weren't many options and choices. I had a sort of political interest in housing and I decided to do architecture. Sometimes you just get a notion about something, and when you say it out loud it becomes self-fulfilling.

"Architecture gave me a broad education. I suppose it's the discipline or the way of thinking that prepares you for other things in life too. You don't have to do the same thing forever."