MACFIE ARCHITECTURE x Ruby Whitaker

Meet Ruby!

Ruby Whitaker — Architectural Graduate

Newest member of the Macfie Architecture team, and a passionate advocate for heritage architecture.

Every practice needs someone who arrives already caring deeply about the right things. Ruby Whitaker is that person.

Ruby joined Macfie Architecture as an Architectural Graduate, bringing a strong academic foundation from the University of Auckland, where she completed both her undergraduate and master's degrees in architecture.

Her master's thesis examined the transformation of Dunedin's historic Downtown Exchange precinct — reimagining its heritage commercial buildings as a new School of Architecture. It's the kind of project that tells you everything about where someone's instincts lie.

Originally from Dunedin, Ruby grew up surrounded by one of New Zealand's most architecturally rich cities, and that early immersion shows. Her passion for heritage architecture — for understanding what makes an old building worth keeping, and how to bring it carefully into the present — is exactly the sensibility that Macfie Architecture was built on.