Michael Panetta is Principal of Panetta+Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg Florida, a licensed architect in four states, and is AIA, NCARB, USGBC, and FCIS, credentialed. He is actively engaged in (Al Gore’s) Climate Reality Leadership Corp, Sierra Club, Tampa Bay Water Keepers, AREI and his St. Pete community.

His sojourn into architecture began as he was growing up with healthy encouragement to explore and ‘building’ alongside his mentors, his extended family of diverse trade masters. The rapidly emerging sciences and environmental activism of the late 1960’s also strongly influenced his professional, civic, and personal work ethic, which formed lifelong undercurrents.

A Syracuse instructor steered him to the BAC’s ‘flexible’ work curriculum, and upon seeing this as his ‘right fit’, he transferred then became immersed in the intense program and thrived in the diversity of like-minded BAC’ers and its Boston environs. After graduating six years later, he became a partner in his first practice, co-instructed several courses, was a regular Studio Design critic as well as a contributor to Don Brown’s Community Studio and book “Designed in Boston”.

Leaving Boston for Los Angeles—the hot bed of culture and design—he assumed studio lead in a large practice for its a-typical/‘problematic’/short fuse projects and competitions. One, a mountainside development with over 400 acres, spanning a mile, and 3500’ of vertical change, occupied a two-year exploration into eco-sustainable design, long before “green was GREEN”. Unfortunately, that all ended with 1991’s devastating S&L crash.

When Hurricane Andrew struck, Michael made a concerned call to a good friend and BAC colleague that was in the hurricane’s path. His check-in call quickly morphed into engaged partnerships for rebuilding efforts. Eventually, he settled into a large multi-office firm specializing in Higher Ed/K-12 projects and assumed the position of Director of Design and Principal of the firm’s Clearwater Office.

Following this, he partnered in a firm for ten years evolving his skills in educational typologies, program development, design integration, and cat herding, winning projects across the state. Among them were several firsts for Florida - Palm Harbor University High School, a distance learning magnet program, and Bayside High School, a purpose-built public at-risk program.

Founding his own practice, and leaving the public educational arena and 50 project catalog, he pursued a diverse slate of work and furthered his holistic design approach with several independent schools, multi-family residences, a gold manufacturing campus, high-concept restaurants, several collaborative ventures, and recently PassivHaus styled off-grid residences.

Independence also created bandwidth for his civic involvements again - guest lecturer, design critic, curriculum advisor at several universities, local host to AIACAE conferences, founder of the PH Montessori Middle School, environmental and community engager, and ‘builder of stuff’ again, he returns to where the circle began - the ‘Hive’.