manufacturing in Great Britain
Progress through Innovation
Frontier is an engineering and manufacturing company investing in a greener future.
Research and development focuses on low-carbon manufacture and volumetric architectural systems,
engineering a new class of housing and adaptive portable buildings.
manufacturing for climate change
Design Promise | climate emergency
Frontier’s multi-disciplinary team sees construction waste as an opportunity, adapting materials and processes where we can, to give ‘waste’ a new life.
Up to 70% of our Frontier materials are recycled or up-cycled from 3rd party waste, or at the end of their design lifecycle. Frontier’s core promise is to innovate relentlessly to protect and enhance our precious natural environment. Procurement involves sourcing from some unusual places, from demolition sites, to fringe markets, to a network of salvage sources.
Engineering Culture | Future Thinking
Convention is the enemy of progress. An all-hands problem-solving culture is right at the heart of Frontier’s strategy. Everyone in the business is a contributor towards innovation. We believe that multi-disciplinary teams achieve outsized success, and that solutions are almost always found with the right mindset. A growing team of 7 neuro-diverse people are creating new manufacturing processes for housing, from the ground up; making next-generation architectural products that deliver extraordinary value. Designing systems for manufacturing at scale is an engineering challenge we revel in.
Working with Nature | Circular Economy
The circular economy is based on 3 key principles:
1) Eliminate waste and pollution
2) Circulate products and materials at their highest value
3) Work with and learn from nature
A circular economy company like Frontier seeks to decouple economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. Nature doesn’t believe in waste, and neither do we.
Background
Frontier Origins
Frontier began its innovation journey in London hotels, as an ambitious startup, engineering a luxury pop-up hospitality suite for a city-centre brownfield site. It was a micro-scale proof of concept, that seemed to surprise and delight,
Some radical and risky ideas were successful. Large-scale hospitality solutions were developed along these lines. During this exploratory project, more radical ideas were tested, and unique solutions for housing and manufacturing were discovered. The normal way of building buildings, it seems, has some major drawbacks. It became clear that the Frontier system could adapt to many different needs, and the impact on housing innovation would be far greater than hotels. The urgent need for greener and more economic housing is self-evident. The UK needs 1 million new houses.
Climate change is another big problem. Changes will put new stresses on existing housing stock. There will also be a global shift in population; the UN projects up to 2 billion refugees by mid-century. These macro-trends require a radical plan. Frontier is at the early stages of manufacturing an adaptive housing system, to improve thousands of lives, and dramatically reduce environmental impact.
Post-pandemic, Frontier has developed a new prototype housing model, now undergoing stress testing. The team is growing. We are developing a new manufacturing system for this, undergoing continual R&D.
Frontier is experimenting with recycled materials, believing this could dramatically reduce the environmental cost of new housing, without compromising quality. Experiments are being run on incorporating alternative materials and developing methods that make this work economically, at scale.
The vision is to create a new scalable housing solution and a new manufacturing system that delivers significant human, environmental, and economic benefits. It is a hands-on process, bringing a unique new product range, to market and a new production model, built from the ground up.