What’s on? Grafton founders to speak on final day of AJ100 Festival

Grafton Architects founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara will headline the final day of the virtual, free-to-watch AJ100 Festival

The pair will be handed the 2020 AJ100 Contribution to the Profession Award and give a keynote lecture about their work at 1pm today (18 September).

Farrell and McNamara join an impressive list of winners of the award, featuring of some of the industry's biggest and most influential names, including Sadie Morgan, David Chipperfield, Alison Brooks, Zaha Hadid, David Adjaye and the recently retired Richard Rogers.

Ahead of that, at 10am, the AJ100 will host its first live event, looking at the ongoing development of Bristol. The historic south-west city has long been known for its creativity and thriving arts scene and is home both to offices for major practices such as AHMM and BDP as well as a clutch of emerging, smaller firms.

The panel discussion will be chaired by AJ managing editor Will Hurst, alongside Bristol City Council's cabinet minister for spatial planning and city design Nicola Beech; Shankari Raj, architect and founder of the Nudge Group; architect and consultant Yuli Cadney-Toh; and chief property officer at the University of Bristol, Barra Mac Ruairi

Simon Carter of British Land

This will be followed at 11.30am by a live interview between Hurst and Simon Carter, 44, who was recently named as the new chief executive of British Land. He will formally replace Chris Grigg at the helm of the property giant in November.

Later in the afternoon (3pm) Nick Edler, an associate architect at Conran and Partners – whose founder Terence Conran sadly died, aged 88, at the weekend – will host the session Sketchbook Live: Five chapters.

The architect will walk through Conran and Partners’ approach to investigating a project through sketching, while demonstrating the ‘creative stream that comes from picking up a pencil’.

The week-long programme concludes with a quiz hosted by programme sponsor Schlüter Systems with the chance to win prizes.

The AJ100 Festival takes place as the AJ100 marks its 25th year in 2020, while the AJ itself is celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding in 1895.

To watch today's events and to catch up on ones you missed, please click here to regsiter

The AJ100 Festival is supported by Headline Partner Roca, Programme sponsors Schlüter Systems and Siemens Home Appliances and Festival sponsors Equitone, VMZinc, Mosa and Fixie. Look out for the insightful and engaging sessions run by our sponsors across the week.