Digital Futures

How do we shape our digital futures? 

Globally, the tech market is now worth $5 trillion a year, Apple alone was the first publicly-traded U.S. company to reach $1 trillion in value. As our worlds’ become increasingly digital, we take a look at the spaces and places where the brightest tech minds gather.

How do you design for innovation? And does that design in-turn influence our visions of tomorrow? 

Uniting architects and academics at the forefront of digital, we ask how the location, architecture, and technology of digital campuses shape both innovation and the communities around them.

From the iconic Apple Park in Silicon Valley, California to the new Bristol Digital Futures institute in Temple Quarter, we explore the cutting-edge design, engineering and psychology behind these ground-breaking centres of innovation.

Our Speakers

• Cormac Farrelly, Director Bristol Office, AHMM
• Brian Eckersley, Founding Director, Eckersley O’Callaghan
• Prof. Daniel Neyland, Co-Director Bristol Digital Futures Institute, University of Bristol  
• Tracy Birkinshaw, Director, Community & Economic Development, Cheltenham Borough Council
• Nick Sturge MBE, Strategic Advisor, Golden Valley

About Our Speakers

• Cormac Farrelly Lead Architect Bristol Digital Futures Institute. Cormac joined AHMM in 2008 & works between the London & Bristol office. He has led a number of competition entries & feasibility studies for the practice. He was the Associate on the Birmingham Building Schools for the Future programme & winner of a RIBA National Award in 2014. He has led work on later living projects in Bristol & Cornwall, student residential & masterplanning projects for Bristol University. He was made an Associate Director in 2015 and Director in 2021.

• Brian Eckersley Lead Structural Engineer Apple Park. Brian is a leading Structural Engineer with over 30 years of experience & a passion for good design. His innovative approach to engineering saw him being involved in the world’s first ever, highly innovative loadbearing glass structures with Rick Mather Architect & on the seminal Tokyo international forum canopy. Since then he co-founded the award-winning structural engineering practice Eckersley O’Callaghan in 2004. Brian teaches at many UK schools of architecture including the Architectural Association, the Bartlett, The Royal College of Art & the University of Cambridge.
• Prof Daniel Neyland is a social scientist & Professor of digital futures in the Bristol University Business School. For over 20 years he has worked on collaborative sociotechnical research projects, often working with computer scientists & engineers to come up with new ways of working and thinking. From studies of the everyday life of algorithms through to research on markets for digital data, he challenges assumptions regarding: the relationship between problems and solutions; what it means to govern and distribute relations of accountability and responsibility; and the process of research.

• Tracey Birkinshaw is the Director of Community & Economic Development at Cheltenham Borough Council. She leads on the ambitious new Golden Valley project.

• Nick Sturge MBE IPO’d a tech business in 1996 then grew the SETsquared Bristol Centre to become the world’s top university business incubator & founded Engine Shed in 2013, a Bristol University/City Council collaboration, to drive sustainable & inclusive economic growth. Nick is now a NED & adviser on founder journeys & innovation ecosystems.

This event is presented in partnership with AHMM, Eckersley O’Callaghan & University of Bristol.

The event takes place at Arnolfini, Bristol, BS1 4QA