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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Deutsche Welle Explores How Bauhaus Principles Live On at ID

German Broadcaster Features ID in its Program "Arts Unveiled"

September 12, 2025

Sylvia Kim featured on the Deutsche Welle program Arts Unveiled

Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international public service broadcaster, has featured ID in its program “How Bauhaus Still Shapes Your Life — Even Your Tech.”

Asking, “What does Bauhaus mean for us today — and why is it still inspiring designers, artists, and creators around the globe?” Deutsche Welle chronicles a brief history of the Bauhaus up to the present, which features ID Dean Anijo Mathew and PhD researcher Sylvia Kim discussing and demonstrating how the Bauhaus sensibility persists in the technologies we shape and create today.

How Bauhaus Still Shapes Your Life — Even Your Tech

A century ago, the Bauhaus movement shook up the world of design, art, education, society and how we think about everyday life. Sure, the world looks different now than it did in 1925 — but the Bauhaus spirit of creativity, simplicity, and breaking the rules? Still totally relevant. So what does Bauhaus mean for us today — and why is it still inspiring designers, artists, and creators around the globe?

ID and Illinois Tech features:
0:55–1:15
4:52–8:58

“
In the past, the masters experimented with the technology of their times. It is incumbent on us to experiment with the materials of our times.
—Anijo Mathew, Dean, Institute of Design

In 1937, Bauhaus emigre László Moholy-Nagy founded ID as The New Bauhaus. Today, ID remains the most direct descendant of the Bauhaus in North America.

For more information on ID’s relationship to the Bauhaus, see Google Arts & Culture’s Bauhaus Everywhere, an in-depth digital project covering the life and legacy of the iconic German art and design school. Artifacts, photos, and documents are featured in ID’s story, an online exhibition called Founding an American Bauhaus.

Sylvia Kim’s (PhD 2026) Research Wins Top Award at Immersive Learning Research Network

ID, ‘An Absolutely Essential Part of the Bauhaus history,’ Partners with Google Arts & Culture

The New Bauhaus