In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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Alex Stark

Artist, Curator, and Queer Disability Advocate

Alex Stark spends his time between Chicago and Colorado where his most recent curatorial works have been shown. In Boulder, Stark was a guest curator at East Window Gallery and founded Rare Visions Gallery where he curated six shows. In Chicago, Stark created and curated the Voices Embodied Project, a series that explores the relationship between disability and identity, celebrating visibility, collaboration, and community engagement.

Stark is a painter who has shown works in Chicago, Colorado, and New York. Some of his paintings can also be found in New American Paintings, 2023, West, Issue #168, Posit, a journal of art and literature (2020), and in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Spring 2019 Biannual Magazine. Stark received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Alex Stark will lead a tour for the Design as Activism Symposium.