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.

institute
of desiGn
Search
Faculty

Weslynne Ashton at Inside Climate News

Discusses Creating Equitable Systems For BIPOC And Urban Farmers

By Aabha A. Kale

January 9, 2023

Weslynne Ashton, ID Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability and co-director of the Food Systems Action Lab, discussed creating equity in food systems with Inside Climate News:

“
We have these long supply chains, so food may be coming from very different places, processed somewhere else, stored somewhere else, and then distributed to folks who need it—and we’ve really lost a lot of localized production.
—Weslynne Ashton, Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability

Ashton is collaborating with a group of academic researchers, community organizations, and civic partners on the systemic problem of marginalization of BIPOC and local urban farmers. The coalition has been awarded a $50,000 grant by the National Science Foundation to channel equity and sustainability into local food systems.

As food requirements of the world evolve, our food systems are affected by institutionalized agriculture. This includes big players who control procurement, production, and distribution. In this environment local producers are often sidelined and BIPOC players do not equitably participate in food systems.

“
Large public institutions have huge spending power, and with their spending power around food, are really able to shift how food procurement happens.
—Weslynne Ashton, Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability

Creating opportunities for small-scale urban farmers to interact and sell to large-scale institutions like schools and hospitals would go a long way toward creating equity in our food system.

Weslynne on FOX32

Weslynne Ashton Discusses Food Waste on Fox32

Farmed food

Weslynne Ashton Joins NSF Research Aiming to Reduce Wasted Food Nationally