Timo Rissanen is an educator, artist, and designer whose work centres on fashion, sustainability, and communication. Timo completed his undergraduate and postgraduate study with UTS, graduating with a practice-based PhD on zero waste fashion design from the School of Design in 2013. In 2019, he became the Associate Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability at Parsons School of Design, New York.
Throughout his residency, Timo considered the relationships between people, time, and the spaces they inhabit. For nine weeks he was situated at the base of the central Library stairwell (in the old Haymarket building) where he observed and interviewed Library staff and students.
The conversations were a conscious act in challenging people to think about a future that exceeds their lifespan, provoking ideas on sustainability and responsibility in our current lifestyles. His transcriptions of the conversations, ideas and stories through cross-stitch – a deliberately slow action – were a deep reflection on the Library as much more than a place, but as a community, eventuating in a poetic, hand-stitched letter to the future UTS Library. Letter to the Library can be viewed on level 8 of the UTS Library.
