Neil Richard Parnes was born in 1940 into a Bostonian Jewish family. He received his early higher education at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia c1965 and subsequently studied at the Architectural Association (AA) in London in 1968–1969, joining the Department of Development and Tropical Studies. By 1972, Parnes had left the UK and was working as a draftsman for the firm of Killingsworth, Brady and Sutter, based on Victoria Street, in Honolulu, Hawaiii. Later in the 1970s he spent several years with Parsons Corporation as a project architect/planner for resort hotels in Maui and Oahu. During the late 1980s / early 1990s, Parnes was posted in Tokyo, where he married Dr. Liu Xiu-Fang, a Chinese physician with whom he had two daughters. Japan’s financial crash led them to leave for China, where Parnes transitioned out of architectural practice to co-found and serve as CEO of Tianjin Ten Star Industries Ltd., a company supplying the food and beverage industry, including a wine trading venture. Parnes later returned to the United States and by 2014 was working in California as an architectural consultant, managing property condition assessment services. In 2011 he contributed a candid, personal “Life Report” essay to a New York Times project in which he reflected on his life and career. As of the latest information, Neil Parnes remains professionally registered (holding an active architect’s license in Hawaii).
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