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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The New Bauhaus Celebrates the Founding of the Institute of Design

Documentary chronicles the early days of the Institute of Design and the legacy of László Moholy-Nagy

By Nuria Sheehan

November 18, 2019

L��szl�� Moholy-Nagy Self Portrait

“Moholy believed in the creative potential of each individual, that everybody has some inner talent,” Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, writer and second wife of László Moholy-Nagy, tells us in the documentary The New Bauhaus. A celebration of Moholy-Nagy and the foundation of The New Bauhaus (today’s IIT Institute of Design, or ID), the documentary screened at the Chicago International Film Festival and was selected as a top ten festival pick by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Travis Lee Bean writes in a film review for Forbes:

“
The New Bauhaus details the original school’s transformation into the IIT Institute of Design, which today hosts some of the top design students in the country.

One of the first faculty members of the Bauhaus in Germany, László Moholy-Nagy left Germany in 1934 after the Nazi regime shuttered the school. Moving to Amsterdam and then London, he settled in Chicago in 1937 to open The New Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy was enthralled by Chicago. “There’s something incomplete about the city and its people that fascinates me. It seems to urge one on to completion,” he wrote to his wife in 1937. “Everything still seems possible…. Yes, I want to stay.” Moholy-Nagy did in fact stay in Chicago, as The New Bauhaus transformed first into the School of Design, where he continued to pioneer modern design principles and pedagogy.

By drawing extensively on personal archives and interviews with Moholy’s daughter Hattula, the film creates an intimate portrait of this early champion of human-centered design. As Hattula Moholy-Nagy said in a conversation at a recent screening,

“
He truly believed that through good art and good design, you could tame industry and get it to work for you and have a better world. He believed one could have a better world.

The film is directed by Alysa Nahmias and produced by Opendox. You can sign up for updates and screenings of the film at www.thenewbauhaus.com.