Kees Liefting

Kees is a Graduate Landscape Architect with an interest in how landscape architecture can create meaningful and empowering connections to place in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is particularly interested in work shaped by cultural narrative, spatial experience and the ways landscape can support belonging.

While completing his Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington, Kees developed an approach grounded in cultural narrative and the experience of space across day and night. His work oriented people towards Te Whānau Mārama, the celestial family of light, exploring reconnection and cultural continuity within the contemporary urban landscape of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. Through design, he investigated how sensory experience and spatial storytelling can reveal often overlooked relationships between people, land, and sky, creating immersive environments that invite reciprocity and cultural learning.

Kees also brings CAD drafting experience from residential landscape design projects across Wellington through his previous work with Urban Landscapes. At Studio Pacific, he contributes to the landscape team with a careful, design-led approach while continuing to build his experience in practice and deepen his understanding of how landscape architecture can support relationships between people, culture and environment.