In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.

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

Facing Climate Change: Meet the Institute of Design in Seattle

October 27, 2022
5:00-7:00pm CST
Blink - UX Research & Design
1011 Western Avenue #Suite 600
Seattle, WA 98104
Forest with smoke
On how organizations can attain climate leadership and how we can use design and circular systems to face climate change.

ID Associate Professor Weslynne Ashton, also a faculty member in the Stuart School of Business and instructor in the ID Academy, discusses how organizations can attain climate leadership and how we can use design and circular systems to face climate change.

Proof of vaccination required.

Register