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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Kazumasa (Kevin) Yamada

Managing Partner at BIOTOPE, Japan

Headshot of Kevin Yamada

Kazumasa Yamada is a Managing Partner, Strategic Designer, and Systemic Designer at BIOTOPE, a strategic design firm in Tokyo.

Prior to joining BIOTOPE, he worked for Mitsui & Co., one of the largest conglomerates in Japan, focusing on infrastructure business. He managed a large-scale M&A, PMI for an Indonesian power asset and engaged in large-scale organizational transformation. Following this engagement, he developed a carbon neutral JV business in the Oceania region.

Since joining BIOTOPE, he has led multiple projects ranging from organizational transformation, innovation facilitation, corporate identity branding, and business creation, to public-private collaboration projects, leveraging his experience in business, as well as his strategic and systemic design expertise.

Kazumasa holds a Master of Design Methods from the Institute of Design.

Shapeshift Session

Tokyo Salon Recap: Mental Health and Wellbeing | Friday, May 30

About the Summit

Shapeshift Summit

Program

Immersion