The Irish Times

Ali Grehan

In just eight years Ali Grehan has gone from joining Ballymun Regeneration as an architect to becoming Dublin City Architect, a job she took up this week. I put it to her that her rise has been swift. "Meteoric?" she asks. "I had valuable experience in both the public and private sector and I think that was recognised but I also think what swung it was my love of Dublin and because I live in the city centre I see how things work and what can be done that is within reach." Her appointment came as a surprise to some in the architecture world, as there were those who had spent longer in the public sector and who seemed positioned to take the job. The experience Grehan talks about includes a stint in London with Greenhill Jenner Architects, working on projects for Lambeth Borough, and Brixton in particular. Most recently she has been chief architect at Ballymun Regeneration and I speak to her on her penultimate day in her office overlooking Ballymun's main street and across the city to the Dublin Mountains. There are huge colour-coded maps on the wall showing how Ballymun has changed - and will continue to transform. In 1964 there were just a few farms here, and then the blocks went up, extending from the centre like octopus tentacles in what could have been a visionary form but were in fact dictated by land tenure: the social housing skirted privately owned fields.