Brian McGrath and Timo Rissanen Join Tishman Center Leadership Team

I am pleased to announce that Brian McGrath and Timo Rissanen have joined Ana Baptista and myself on the leadership team at The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center.

Brian McGrath is Professor of Urban Design and served as Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons School of Design. He is also the founder and principal of urban-interface, a consultancy fusing expertise in urban design, ecology and media. McGrath is a Co-Principal Investigator in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research, where he leads the Urban Design Working Group. McGrath served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Thailand in 1998-99 and an India China Institute Fellow in 2006-2008 and as the Research Director in the joint US-EU Transatlantic exchange program Urbanisms of Inclusion. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University and his Masters of Architecture degree from Princeton University, and attended the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. He currently serves on the Advisory Editorial Board of AD Architectural Design Magazine in London and Nakhara Journal of Environmental Design and Planning at Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Architecture, Bangkok, Thailand.

Dr. Timo Rissanen has been the Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability at Parsons School of Design since 2010. Prior to Parsons he was faculty at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, for seven years. He was born in Finland and trained as a fashion designer at UTS. Rissanen completed a practice-based PhD at UTS in 2013, focusing on zero waste fashion design. As an artist he has focused on fashion, labor and waste through installation, performance and cross-stitched poetry. Rissanen has co-published two books on fashion and sustainability, Shaping Sustainable Fashion (with Alison Gwilt, 2011) and Zero Waste Fashion Design (with Holly McQuillan, 2016). He co-curated the sustainability-focused exhibitions Fashioning Now in 2009 and Yield in 2011, with Gwilt and McQuillan respectively.Professors McGrath and Rissanen will serve as Associate Directors at the Tishman Center, along with Professor Ana Baptista who will be continuing in this role, providing guidance and support for important research and projects that will advance our mission to advance a more just and sustainable society in collaboration with communities. Please join me in congratulating Brian and Timo, and welcoming them to their new roles at the Tishman Center!Michelle DePass