James Horan reckons he works between 70 and 80 hours each week. He has to. Not only is he a partner in the Blackrock, Co Dublin, practice of O'Dowd, O'Herlihy, Horan Architects, he's also head of the school of architecture at DIT Bolton Street. Combining practice with academia can be difficult, he says, but is definitely advantageous. "There are practical benefits to be gained from contacts with students and academic staff and the school benefits - in that I'm out in the workplace and keeping up to the minute with the technology."

Horan came a little late to architecture - it wasn't his first career choice. He'd grown up in Galway where he attended St Ignatius College. His bent was always artistic and, encouraged by his grandmother, he was drawing and painting from the age of three. At school, though, the young Horan found he was good at science. It was a trip to Africa - after he had left school - that resulted in his decision to become a missionary. He spent three years with the Divine Word Missionaries studying philosophy and psychology. During this time, he began to realise that a career in architecture, which combined practical science and creative art skills, would suit him enormously.

His application to DIT was accepted and he completed the course in record time - five years. Yes, architecture is a five-year course, but nowadays the average time it takes to qualify is six-and-a-half years, mostly because people take time out, he says.

Architectural education has changed enormously in the years since Horan was a student. "Student awareness about architectural trends and the thinking and the levels of debate about the philosophies behind architectural ideas are much more sophisticated and on a higher level than when I was a student," he says.

In the last 10 years, public awareness of the issues has also increased. In recent times, "the basic fabric of the city (Dublin) has improved beyond measure. Expectations are much higher and the sense of critical analysis - by the public - is much greater. In the 1960s and 1970s, people built with little or no concept of conservation. That's changed. The concept of conservation is now deeply rooted in the public mind. The 1999 Heritage Act has changed totally the way we look at our existing building stock. The teaching of conservation methods and the techniques and philosophies of conservation are now part of our own architectural education courses."

A significant debate in architecture education just now is the use of technology. Finding a way to integrate technology with the traditional values and skills of the architect has become a major issue. While he's got nothing against technology, Horan firmly believes in the survival of traditional skills. The ability to draw is essential. "If we relied totally on computers, the skill of drawing would be lost," he notes. "If you draw a building, the act of drawing internalises that building in a way that taking or examining a photograph can never do."

The use of technology, though, remains important. "If we graduate architects who can't use computers, they will be unemployable." Nonetheless, a school of architecture is about more than simply producing graduates for the marketplace. "We want to develop students' minds to the point that they are not solely driven by the marketplace, but can bring other qualities to their work. We want them to see the aesthetics of life as being more important than the economics of life."

Architects, Horan says, are less driven by money than are other professions. "That's partly because architectural education deals with quality over quantity - the quality of the environment, space and light." For most architects the size of a room would be less immediately important than the quality of its light and its orientation. The main interest of the marketplace, on the other hand, would be the room's size.

For the future, Horan predicts, the single biggest issue for architects will be sustainability. The planet's resources are finite. Increasingly, architects must address this issue in relation to the materials they use in their buildings. "Can the materials be replaced and what is involved in replacing them? If you decide to use a certain hardwood - a Burmese teak, say - you will deprive the forest of a tree. Another tree can be grown - but there's a time element and an assumption that someone will replace it." Then you have to consider the amount of energy that is used to run the sawmill and transport the tree to Dublin. As yet, there's no best practice in relation to the sustainability exercises architect's might carry out in the course of their work, he says. At the moment, "it's an academic issue. I compare it to conservation as an issue 25 years ago. Sustainability could be legislated for in the future." At DIT, meanwhile, "we are responding to make students aware of what sustainability means and how it impacts on projects".

According to Horan, architectural appreciation should be taught in junior school. "It's not sufficient to be talking about architectural appreciation at third level," he says. "It's one of the most important parts of the arts - the part in which we live. Students should become architecturally aware at a much earlier age."

The DIT's school of architecture head is critical of much of our modern development. Until recently, he says, up to 90 per cent of new houses built in Ireland were not designed by architects and many parts of the State have been destroyed by inappropriate buildings. "In Ireland we don't feel confident enough to build good contemporary housing. We feel the need to emulate the past, particularly in housing," Horan says. "When Irish people first began to make money they built smaller versions of the big house. In the late 20th century we were exposed to the affluence of the US and the international community and our new-found wealth tried to emulate that rather than allow indigenous building.

If you were a visitor to Ireland, you'd be hard pushed to find contemporary housing that made reference to our indigenous houses. The references are more likely to be the Costa del Sol, Southfork and the Georgian big house. "Indigenous Irish architecture never got beyond the thatched cottage. We went from the two-roomed thatched cottage to the five-bedroomed Dallas house with four rooms en suite and a jacuzzi."