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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Institute of Design Invites Applications for Funded Position in its PhD Program

Join NSF research efforts to reduce food waste

March 1, 2022

Tomoko with Students

The Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech invites applications for a 3-year funded position in its PhD program, the first PhD program in Design offered in the US. The successful candidate will work with Weslynne Ashton, ID Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability, on developing design frameworks to enable more effective use of food in the United States.

This research is part of a broader initiative, the Wasted Food Research Network, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), bringing together over 40 researchers and 14 institutions working across the food system to advance the science needed to make our wasteful food system sustainable, equitable, and resilient. More about the project is available here.

The Institute of Design was founded in Chicago by Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy in 1937. It is home to the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students and has pioneered human-centered design, systems design, and a methods-based approach to design.

The team at ID and the Illinois Institute of Technology will collaborate with community, industry, and academic stakeholders in Chicago and beyond, in research and co-design, for developing circular innovations for wasted food, articulating the multiple types of value advanced through collaborative approaches in wasted food management, and facilitating partnerships for adopting and scaling such solutions.

Requirements: English proficiency, background in design research/strategy and a technical area of expertise (e.g., engineering, data science, or food science).

Preferences: significant experience working with organizations and communities in US cities; knowledge of urban and/or environmental design, industrial ecology and/or circular economy, and prior teaching experience.

Please email Weslynne Ashton at washton@iit.edu for further information about how to apply for this position.