New Future telescopes three main intersecting activities: public engagement, training and upskilling, and specialist services for the built environment. All three work towards achieving a low- carbon, socially equitable built environment.

What does our public engagement focus entail? We work to kick-start and nurture accessible conversations about the built environment, climate resilience, and social equity. We do this by organising a range of events, from exhibitions to round-table and panel discussions, to B2B and lobbying meetings – all of which target a diverse mix of professionals, policymakers, and the general public. We are less interested in abstract discussions and more in devising tangible outcomes collectively. To us that means connecting people, sharing knowledge, and influencing public discourse in a way that is approachable and rooted in the real problems we believe exist.

How do we train and up-skill? We focus on bridging the gap between design and trades education, creating a curriculum that sees the two as wholly reciprocal, serving an aim of constructing low-carbon places. Currently, we are training existing tradespeople and design professionals to become instructors and educators themselves. We have our eye on the next generation, and aside from upskilling trainers, we are also looking to tour primary schools to begin planting the message of environmental responsibility in classrooms. Our training often uses live projects, stewarded with a learning focus on natural materials, climate resilience, and healthy building practices.

What do we mean by specialist services? New Future delivers professional services that already exist in the construction industry, but are currently disjointed, feeding a status quo of carbon intensive, unhealthy environments. So we deliver these same services under the umbrella of our wider philosophy. They include domestic energy advice, retrofit assessments, whole- house retrofit, and more, all carried out with a focus on low-carbon, sustainable methods. Offering practical construction services is a way for New Future to maintain its commitment to practical implementation over mere theoretical advocacy. Our approach is to build the systems we want to see.

Within these three main activities, New Future’s outputs are grouped under the themes of:

Addressing a green skills gap: Developing education, training and employment systems to address the climate crises at a fundamental, cross-disciplinary and foundational level.

Accelerating Net Zero: By investigating and implementing reduction of domestic / non-domestic energy demand and sustainably rehabilitating disused and at-risk buildings.

Increasing representation: Addressing structural inequalities through engaging marginalised groups, providing an inclusive, supportive training environment tailored to deliver exemplar education.

Advancing low-carbon construction: Building infrastructures for bio-based, circular materials in new-build, retrofit, and heritage projects, and advancing truly sustainable design.

Delivering equitable training & employment: By removing barriers to education, and developing replicable community enterprises models to support this work.

Empowering residents: Helping communities accelerate environmental, social, economic transformation. Prioritising retrofit / regeneration to reallocate resources, fostering security, health, and employment.

Our professional services extend from our values and aims – to make sustainable construction the new ‘business-as-usual’. This means they are implemented within the parameters of building sustainably.

Our full range of current services are:

Domestic Energy Advice

Retrofit Assessment

Architectural Design (all RIBA Stages & contract management)

Specialist Retrofit Design

Energy & Technical consultancy

Whole-House Retrofit Planning

What does this look like in practice? To us, it’s about re-framing traditional services, such as Domestic Energy Advice, as integrated exercises – meaning they address more than one thing at once, moving beyond their conventional scope. In this case, advice prioritises not just energy efficiency but environmental and human health.

Who carries out these services? New Future ensures its practitioners and advisors come from a construction background. We are wary of service provision that favours rapid training over rigour. Our advice is grounded in holistic understanding of buildings and their environmental impact. We will never offer quick certifications or assessments.

Who should seek out these services? Anyone interested in contributing to, and living in, sustainable, healthy, socially equitable environments. Conversely, we are not right for anyone looking for surface eco-solutions driven by compliance. We’re a good match with people motivated by values like community benefit, low-impact living, and healthy materials.

What are your specialist areas? Aside from the complete range of RIBA Architectural Design stages, our major offerings are Retrofit Assessment and Whole-House Retrofit planning. We build phased, comprehensive strategies that propose multifarious interventions, each analysed not just for energy savings but for carbon impact, material health, and long-term performance.

How are you different from other sustainability service providers? New Future funnels all research, advocacy and services into making buildings that are healthy for people, communities, and planet. This informs all our decisions – big or small. For example, we refuse to promote petrochemical-based materials, focusing instead on natural, low-impact alternatives.

What is your approach to heritage buildings? Our combined experience allows us to marry rigorous architectural knowledge with leading, evidence-driven environmental practice. We resist the growing industry trend of oversimplified or commercially driven retrofit models. We genuinely factor in buildings’ fabric, history, and social context. It’s more than material conservation. Our retrofit services comply with PAS 2035 standards, but we push beyond them to demonstrate how social identity and programme can also be mindfully renewed.

New Future runs an Events programme alongside its construction services and the New Future Construction School, aiming to bolster teaching and practice aims with ongoing advocacy, research and dialogue.

At community level, we initiate public engagement projects such as exhibitions, panel discussions, and workshops, helping to make the challenge of building sustainable, healthy environments an accessible, shared subject.

We curate events in ways that connect different sectors – from heritage to energy – in a bid to bring together tradespeople, designers, policymakers, and the general public. We want our events to host critical conversations, shared learning, and enable new networks to be built across traditionally siloed industries.

We drive research-based endeavours and at any given time could be writing papers, policy briefs, and reports that offer actionable recommendations for improving sustainable construction, retrofitting, and education practices. Our goal is to influence policy incrementally but tangibly, through credible, grounded, accessible research outputs.