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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Lucía Garcés Dávila, MA

Participatory Design Facilitator and Educator

As a designer and educator with degrees in Graphic and Industrial design, Lucia implements creative and collaborative teaching activities centered on participatory design and popular education, emphasizing visual and ethnographic research. Lucía co-founded MUUCH Design Lab, which has projects in Ecuador and Mexico. With MUUCH, Lucía and her colleagues have developed creative participatory programs that promote intergenerational dialogue, cultural revitalization, and environmental conservation to meet local needs. Her most recent work involves facilitating participatory design processes with high school students to address current environmental justice issues in Chicago.

Lucía Garcés Dávila is a session presenter for the Design as Activism Symposium.