TAMA WHITING

Tama Whiting is a landscape architect and designer descended from Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, a Māori tribe from Aotearoa New Zealand on his father’s side, and various Indigenous groups from Flores, Maluku, and Sulawesi in Indonesia on his mother’s side. Based in Sydney, he is a Senior Design Consultant at SCAPE, a design-driven landscape architecture and urban design studio in New York City. Tama leads interdisciplinary design initiatives and cultivates relationships across the Pacific Rim, focusing on design justice, cultural narratives, and ecological resilience.
Tama’s work explores the role of Indigenous knowledge systems in shaping the built environment. His projects often involve co-design processes with communities, weaving together storytelling, spatial justice, and restorative landscape strategies. With experience spanning Aotearoa, the US, and Australia, he works across a range of scales, from waterfronts and public spaces to cultural landscapes and precinct master plans.
Through his work, Tama advocates for design practices that are adaptive, site-responsive, and grounded in deep collaboration.