In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design came under new management. 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.

institute
of desiGn
Search
Past Event

NOWHaus 2022

April 9, 2022
5:00-9:00pm CST
Zhou B Art Center
1029 West 35th Street
Chicago, IL 60609
The ID community shares crazy interests, secret obsessions, quirky observations, and unexpected learnings through fun fast storytelling.

After a 2-year COVID hiatus, NOWHaus is back. Typically an annual social event led by Institute of Design (ID) students, NOWHaus is inspired by ID’s history as The New Bauhaus. At NOWHaus, ID students, faculty, and staff share their crazy interests, secret obsessions, quirky observations, and unexpected learnings through fun, fast presentations (20 images for 20 seconds each), standup, and other storytelling mediums. There will also be time to mingle with the Chicago design community over food and drinks.

Check out video from NOWhaus 2019. 

What does my ticket include?

Aside from fun content and great company, your ticket includes admission, food, drinks!

About the Institute of Design (ID)

The Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech was founded in Chicago by Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy in 1937. It has since pioneered human-centered design, systems design, and a methods-based approach to design. Today ID is home to the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students—the first to offer the PhD in design. Uniting science and rigor with creativity and rapid iteration, ID focuses on the systems that shape modern life (including cities, education, finance, food, healthcare, and technology) and building new worlds from them, together. Learn more about ID at id.iit.edu.

Register