Renae Tapley

Renae is an agile thinker and an engaging leader who has a passion for sustainable building materials and the green economy. She is a 2023 recipient of the Western Australian Government’s New Industry Fund: Innovation Booster Grant for her passion project, Future Materials.

With over 20 years experience leading interior architecture projects and design teams, Renae is currently Associate Director at Foolscap Studio, a boutique interior architecture practice that works across Australia in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. She is a Green Star Accredited Professional with the Green Building Council of Australia, a member of the WWF Materials Embodied Carbon Leaders Alliance (MECLA), and Founder of Future Materials.

Renae holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interior Architecture with Honours, from Curtin University and she has volunteered with Architects without Frontiers in 2009, designing and building a preschool in the Tekra Slums outside of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India.

With an unwavering enthusiasm to influence change in the construction industry, Renae is developing a green building materials directory marketplace platform, called Future Materials. It is a place for designers, builders, renovators and manufacturers to discover design-led, low carbon and circular products. Future Materials makes hard-to-find environmental product information visible and accessible, whilst educating and advocating for sustainable manufacturing.

Renae was awarded a 2023 Churchill Fellowship to research innovation in green building materials manufacturing and supply in global markets. The knowledge gathered on the trip will be shared with the Australian construction industry and key stakeholders to demonstrate successful case studies of green materials fabrication and product manufacturing that are commercialised, and the learnings can contribute to our net zero and green economy future. The end goal of the project is to drive up demand for circular and closed loop products, and to sustain a thriving local supply chain of green materials innovation.