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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Past Event

Sustainable Solutions Workshop Showcase

November 30, 2016
9:00-11:00am CST
IIT Institute of Design
565 W Adams St 7th floor
Chicago, IL 60661

Join Carlos Texeira and his Sustainable Solutions Workshop students for an interactive showcase. Examining the complexities of contemporary local food systems, students have proposed interventions from new business models to new services linking people with food knowledge, tools, and means of production. Ultimately, their ideas envision new ways to impact local lives and the wellbeing of communities through innovation in food. 


About the course


Contemporary problems and its solutions can be defined as complex adaptive systems because they emerge from the daily behavior of seven billion people looking for better standards of living when confronting the challenges and opportunities shaped by the unprecedented interconnectivity of the world economy, the global society, and the natural environment. In this course students will learn how to apply design methods and strategic thinking through open innovation practices for leveraging the interconnectivity of markets, technology, finance, and social networks in order to envision sustainable solutions with impact in the local lives and wellbeing of communities. 


About the project


Illinoisans consume on average 48 Billion USD worth of food, and almost every single dollar spent on that leaves the state. Recently a new movement has been surfacing, new engines of a grassroots economic development. The demand for local food has been explosive, and this explosion is accompanied by a myriad of local initiatives, such as food hubs, food co-ops, internet of food solutions and other exciting local food initiatives that are disrupting the traditional value web of food production and consumption systems in Chicago. Through this project we will look at the challenges and opportunities of sustainably bringing local food to the people of Chicago by leveraging the interconnectivity of markets, technology, finance, and social networks.

Register