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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  • Food Systems Action Lab

Multiscale RECIPES for Sustainable Food Systems

November 2021 - August 2024

RECIPES Workshop Food Systems Action Lab
Designing a Sustainable, Equitable, and Resilient Food System

Summary

We are a member of Multiscale RECIPES, a research network that brings together researchers and institutions across the country to transform our wasteful food system into a sustainable, equitable and resilient one.

Funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF Grant 2115405)

OPPORTUNITY

In the United States, it’s estimated that up to 40 percent of food produced is never eaten. Food is being wasted at every step of the food supply chain that connects farms to forks—from production to distribution to stores, restaurants, and consumers.

“
The food industry has been wonderfully successful at increasing the supply and distribution of food across the world, but climatic and ecological impacts of wasted food have historically been overlooked.
—Professor Weslynne Ashton

PROCESS

Creative & Critical Collaboration

Current efforts to address this challenge have varied from very grassroots and community oriented to local government initiatives to private investment and industry coalitions.  RECIPES aims to pull information together from multiple sources nationally and investigate how to use that data for more comprehensive solutions.

As part of RECIPES Network, we are co-designing ways to foster creative and critical collaboration amongst researchers from various backgrounds and expertise, while advancing knowledge and skills needed for inclusive research with communities.

TEAM

Lab Co-Directors

Weslynne Ashton
Maura Shea

 

Student Researcher

Azra Sungu

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