User:Loishonan/sandbox

Early Life - Education
Florence Fulton Hobson, an Irish architect from Ireland who is also believed to be the first professional woman architect in Ireland was first educated at the Friend's School, Lisburn Road (Hayes, 2012). Later attending Belfast College of Art, Hobson first had the idea of becoming an architect here. It was here that she studied in practice of James John Philips, a leading Methodist church architect in Belfast who was an associate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and his son James st. John Philips(RIBA, 2001). She passed her first examination with the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1899. Shortly after her apprenticeship, Hobson moved to London, where she worked in the office and gained experience as an assistant in the of Guy Dawber and then with James Glen Sivewright Gibson in the Old Bond Street office from 1903 to 1904 (Royal Irish Academy, 2009). She was later elected in 1911 a licentiate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RBIA) as one of the first women in the institution and as the first woman from Ireland. She then returned to Ireland in 1905, where she joined the architectural staff of Belfast Corporation and was assigned as an assistant to the royal commission on health and housing (Groot, 2018). While working in her assistant role to the Royal Commission on Health and Housing, she travelled to Germany and Switzerland to see their approach to the housing problems and study housing issues in those countries (Hayes, 2012).