Heading to France

This is the story of how I got to France and how I am working to get into the French architecture world.

If you are one of my clients, please, do not get me wrong, I love France but I also love writing about my personal experiences.

Even thought life in Ireland was great, I had to choose between my growing architectural career in Dublin and family. I still remember all my thoughts when I learned I had to move to France. It was back in 2017 when I found out I was expecting my first child, that was great news.

To start with, I was working in a good practice in Dublin and my responsibilities were increasing. I was working developing conceptual design and planning applications for hotels and apartments. In addition, I was preparing everything to start my masters in Oxford Brookes in the UK.

Everything was working perfectly, nevertheless, I was growing a baby with no family in Dublin but my husband. Leaving Ireland was a hard decision but we knew it was the right thing to do.

It was a whole new adventure for me as I was not fluent in French and it was a country that I barely knew.

In January 2018 I stepped into this country, and all I can say is that being pregnant in France is amazing, lots of great hospitals and practitioners, but being pregnant plus trying to get a spot in the French architecture field was tricky.

First, it took me long time to find out how to continue my education equivalence, between bureaucracy and misinformation I ended up applying from scratch to the national architecture school. By this it means that I had to pass language examination called DELF B2, so it was a lot of work but totally worth it.

Second, my pregnancy was so advanced that few companies took me in consideration for a job interview.

Third, maternity leave is way to shorter than in Ireland.

As a result I decided to launch this company in France, originally created in Ireland, and surprisingly Fx motions helped me get my first job as an Architect in collaboration with a Registered Architect in Paris.