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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Arrenius Karunakaran

Learning Experiences Manager

Arrenius Karunakaran

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Arrenius Karunakaran is a Learning Experiences Manager at the Institute of Design. Fascinated by how elements within complex systems exchange value, Arrenius works with organizations to develop effective innovation practices that generate meaningful value for their stakeholders. Working at the intersection of business and design, Arrenius constantly bridges theory and practice by crafting experiences that enable professionals to apply human-centered practices in their unique contexts.

Arrenius holds a Bachelor of Design from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, a Master of Design from the Institute of Design, and an MBA from Illinois Tech’s Stuart School of Business.