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John Kneski
John Kneski was born in New York in 1964. Before moving to Miami to study architecture under Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, he worked in construction in New York where he developed an interest in architecture. During that time, he played saxophone in the Hamptons Music Festival orchestra, part of that time recording (lp) under the direction of Teo Macero, who had previously produced works by Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, and Charlie Byrd for Columbia. He earned professional Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1987 which included stusies at the Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, the Università Iuav di Venezia, and the Architectural Association. He received a terminal degree (M.Arch II.) in architecture from Syracuse University in 1990 after residency at Syracuse's Villa Rosa campus in Florence, Italy. After apprenticing in the firm of Norman Jaffe & Associates Architects he established a furniture design practice, and galleries, in Coral Gables and Miami, which received much national attention. He was on the design team at Norman Jaffe Architects that built the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.

He has represented academic institutions at the state level as the President of the Florida Collegiate Honors Council, which is comprised of over thirty member institutions; and at the national level as an elected member of the Council on Undergraduate Research in Washington DC, which represents over 900 colleges and universities. In his career as an architect and preservationist, he has been published in various journals, most notably Metropolis, Preservation Today, and Architecture. He was the lead researcher and author of the Historic Survey & Contributing Structures Report that lead to the creation of Miami's fourth historic district, Spring Garden. He was also the editor of the report used in the original accreditation of the Master of Architecture Degree Program at FIU, and was the Editor of the Honors Excellence Paper Series, which has included notable lecturers such as the architect Robert A. M. Stern. He is has just completed a book on the scientific work of Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State.